My Choice
by SilverLocke980
Summary: The characters, and their thoughts on the weapons they wield. Two new chapters, Vaan/Ninja Swords and Cuchulainn, up!
1. Chapter 1

Umm, wow.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up Silverlocke980's thoughts on Final Fantasy Twelve. Gorgeous backdrops, story that goes BAM at the beginning and, though tapering off at certain times, never actually loses its power… and the character of the cities.

(I never thought the day would come when a non-human race was treated as totally normal- as _human_- in a game. FFXII does it to _every races_. And as an added bonus the two who get this treatment best are arguably the most absolutely non-human races in the game. Count the bangaa and the seeq on the roll of races that are personal favorites of mine- seeq especially.)

(That belly laugh just kills me.)

And you know what's wild? I just knew that I was gonna _hate this game_- that it'd be another turgid, "find myself" filled quest to save the world with Goths that look suspiciously like metrosexuals leading a stupid crusade to fill the world.

It ain't.

The game is crazy because _there is no main character_. I think you play Vaan for simplicity purposes in cities, because you can take him out and never use him if you feel like it. Vaan is awesome, because he's not the main character. It makes him so much more real- he _ain't _leading this team. He's there to support, and it makes his character so much greater. He feels _real_.

Basch, Ashe, heck, even Fran. Everybody's got development.

And the weapon system. Man. That's what this story is based on- what this whole series of stories will be based on, if I'm lucky. The reasons the characters pick the weapons they do.

And I'm not talking about Balthier waxing theatrical on his gun (heaven knows that would be sweet, but beyond the point). Since anyone can wield _any_ weapon…

Side-story time. (grin)

That said… it's…

"SHOWTIME!"

My Choice

Part 1:

Lady of Knives

Penelo could not tell them, that first day, that she had no idea what to do in combat and the most she'd ever killed was the hyenas that roamed the Giza Plains in the wet and dry. She could not tell them that when she first entered combat with _real_ monsters, with _real_ people, ones with armor and swords and shouting words and screams and cries and bloodshed, that she was afraid she would crack.

But growing up on the streets of Rabanastre with no family

(And she'd seen the girls changed by it, the ones called prostitutes by scholars and girls of gil by others, and befriended them, because when you were poor you always try to make friends with those just as bad off as you)

Had hardened her, surprisingly, and when she first lashed out with a dagger, her first thought was not

(oh look at all the horrible blood spurting!)

But rather that it felt _good_, to strike back against the monsters who had ruined her life. And it felt _good_ to fight the Imperials, to defend Queen Ashe, to help those who had helped themselves their whole lives and who had changed Vaan into more of a man than he'd ever been. And so she still goofed off with everyone, and she still had fun, and the most important thing to Penelo was that _she was happier now_.

And she owed it all to the little knife she kept with her, a dagger by any other name. And when they found another dagger, one with poison on it, she was the one who took it, handling it carefully

(Cutting oneself with poison was a bad idea this far away from a healer)

Because this was her weapon, this was her choice.

She was the lady of knives. And her smile would be the last thing the Imperials would ever see.

-R&R please!


	2. Bolt and Blonde

Silverlocke980 here. Wow, two updates in two days.

(I've gone crazy.)

I'd like to give silvina a big shout-out for being my very first reviewer for my very first FFXII fic. Thank you!

And as a special dedication, this chapter is for you. Danke sehr!

(I used to have a German girlfriend. Guess what that means- I speak really bad German.)

So with that done, it's….

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 2

Bolt and Blonde

She is not the happy girl they all think she is.

Penelo is standing in a room the sextet have rented, waiting for a time when they can move out and do what they can for the people of Dalmasca. This is the way it has always been.

This is the way it always will be.

She is staring at an object on the dresser and she is thinking about the fact that if any of them saw her, they'd be a little confused that the bubbly, cheerful girl they knew is frowning so very hard.

And all six of them play roles that are not them but are ones they are comfortable with

(And she thinks it funny that Balthier may be the only one of them true to himself, that the most theatrical of them all is the only one not acting)

And she is most comfortable pretending to be happy.

And when you've been the bright spot in the life of hundreds of down-trodden, oppressed people, it's almost impossible not to be, because you played happy in the first place because of your belief in something better

(And soon they're going to meet the Grand Kiltias and she wonders what that will be like)

And giving people joy is one of the things that makes _you_ feel joy, so even when you feel depressed you feel like giving it your all and _smiling_. And when people smile back the work turns to play and you actually are smiling.

It's a good cycle.

But sometimes you just can't work up the will to smile _everywhere _at once, to the point where one's face will wear it and one's hands will betray nervousness with shaking and the heart will pump like the red blood that fills its veins is oil on fire. And sometimes, the little girl who grew up poor and a daughter of the streets, who saw the gil girls of the streets and vowed to not be like them, has a cold, clinical part of her mind that she shares with all Lowtown Rabanastrans.

(Vaan has it, too, the part of him that tells him what to steal and when and how. Old Dalan has it, and it has let him build a network that may be making him the most well-informed person in the world. And though Ashe wants it and all of her rebels have it, she could never achieve the cold practicality of this frosty half of the mind.)

But this is balanced in Penelo with the happiness she feels, and it is this combination of traits that led her to spend the hard-earned gil she'd made at the tanners for the wolf pelts she'd collected for the thing laying on her dresser.

She is not a physical fighter. She has seen Ashe's skill with the sword and shield, hard to hit, ducking and weaving and slicing. She has seen Vaan practicing with his dagger, cutting foes to the quick, and moving up to swords under Basch's patience.

(As for Basch himself, there are not words that can describe Basch's dominance in the field of close combat.)

This team does not need more physical fighters and she could not be one if she tried. She is lithe, not wiry. Limber, not tough. She does not possess the agility of Ashe in close quarters and she is not possessed of Basch's raw strength. She does not even half Vaan's half-cocky, half-useful stances, odd shifts in weight and reach making her unpredictable.

And so she has been looking at ranged weapons, because while she has slowly been learning magic from the scrolls they buy, there is often not enough Mist in an area to support constant casting.

(She remembers when the Mist went dry once, with Ashe bleeding all over the place, torn in the gut from claws and Penelo's cries oh, gods, please, just one more Cure)

So at first she thought to try Fran's archery, and asked her if she could practice. And while her aim was good and steady, her arm was not, and pulling back the longbow tired her out. And the Viera actually laughed, a wondrous sound that was a combination of deep throaty chuckling and flutes. So she gave that up, sheepishly giving Fran back her bow and arrows.

(Balthier was still laughing about it when they found him, laughing that something could make Fran laugh more than at Penelo's archery itself.)

(Penelo thinks he loves her.)

And then she asked Balthier (days later, when she could get the courage), to try his guns. He handed her the newest model, a Sirius, and she practiced with it and found that she was pretty good. Her aim was fine, and as Balthier taught her, the gun itself was doing all the work- she just had to aim. But she didn't like it because the recoil was too strong and she wanted a weapon that would go _out_ from her, and not back _into_ her, and the smoke nearly choked her when Balthier tried to teach her to shoot on the run, rushing back to her face with the wind.

So here they were, and they'd just been given a bowgun by the Garif's war-chief. And when she'd seen it, something had clicked.

Penelo had found her weapon.

It was in the pulling back, in the loading, that the weapon was hard, but bracing it against the ground with a foot would solve that problem. And it felt so much more dynamic than using a gun- where all you do is pull the trigger- or even using a bow, because your feet had to be involved and you had to really take the time to aim, because you weren't getting another shot. And it was powerful and straight and true, and Penelo loved it for one more reason secret inside her.

This weapon was practical. It was all the cold she'd ever felt in her life and needed. Powerful enough to make the time she spent using it worthwhile, yet demanding nothing of her small frame like a gun's recoil would do. And yet it was not a weapon without heart, for she found- on those nights she was feeling happy, which came more and more often as they succeeded in escaping death and destruction just one more time, as they and the side of good won one more time after one more time- that the weapon was also very _fussy_, and she had to constantly work and mess and tweak with it to get it just right, and it was surprisingly fun and gave her weapon character. And so it fit with both halves of her soul, and she was all right.

And then she discovered how to modify it further, and it truly became _her_ weapon, no longer identifiable as what the Garif had given her, a treasure of her own making and one she worked on endlessly. She became great at it as time went on, having fun while doing work, just like she had when she worked to smile so others would too.

It was a good cycle.

Penelo became known as a Bowgunner, and when the world was saved and it was all over, her weapon stood proud with the others, leaning against swords of many kinds, a gun, and what Penelo came to refer to as her crossbow's "older brother", Fran's bow.

It was her choice. Bolt and blonde, just like the ice and light in her soul.

Two halves that were one.

-R&R please!


	3. My Friend

Hey everybody. It's Silverlocke980 here… and he's noticed something.

Two chapters, two reviews. You know what that means?

(It means to assuage his horrible ego, he's gonna have to write a thousand chapters.)

But FFXII is so good, that I don't think I need to work to do that.

This chapter is dedicated to Tiger5913 (fascinating, I've done more dedications in this one story than all my others put together), because she said she liked Ashe better than Penelo.

Here you go. It's…

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 3

My Friend

I will protect this girl, I told myself when I saw her, rushing towards me in the tomb of the greatest man who had ever lived. I will protect her, even as I sense that she will win this battle, the man-boy at her side quick and laughing and the others at her back strong and fierce. I could call up hellfire to consume them, but this one woman I will let win.

And when I do, I look at her, and I reach out, and some small part of me wraps around this child of light and binds with her, this one who can, when the Mist is thick, command the stars to burn her foes with holy fire. And while I am not holy fire, am in fact the opposite, I too will burn her foes for her, as we bond and she becomes my summoner.

Because in me there is a very special something, a desire.

A will.

A will to protect. A will to give back.

A will to repay, centuries later, the descendant of the one man who'd never cursed me for my face, to give back all that was given to me, most shame-faced and hated of all creatures in existence. When that one man- my master, my _friend_- told me one day, as we were marching to crush a rebellion in the northern slopes, that he considered me his friend, this day was sealed in eternity.

I will protect you. I will protect you because you remind me of what was greatest in Raithwall, that he was such a _good_ man, better than I or the world itself deserved, to the points where the gods themselves now talk to him, in those halls I was cast from. And I, who decided to serve him out of boredom with the unchanging pace of days, the only one left of those millions of men and women who found in him a hero, will protect you, because you are not Raithwall and I don't expect you to be. Your situation is different and Raithwall could do no worse than you are doing.

But that same kindness _is_ in you. And that kindness is more important than strength or tone or even your lack of ability to fully communicate your frustration with weakness in words.

(Raithwall could have bantered with the devil himself and won. I should know- Ultima used to be my boss.)

I am weak.

I am not like the other Espers, titans all, capable of commanding the universe itself to bend to their whims. I am barely able to summon the hellfire that burns this world to consume my foes, and that only when my very life is in danger.

But unlike the others, I am strong because I care. I will never stop fighting for Ashe, because fighting for Ashe means I can repay Raithwall, all these long years dead, for the kindness he showed me in being my friend.

(I will never fail you, old friend, he'd said to me while we were marching on those slopes and I asked him if his human knees were going to fail, arrogant as I ever was, and the comment, thrown to the side like all comments thrown between two old friends, stopped me and an Esper's knees failed)

And none of them will guard Ashe as fiercely as I do.

This is for you, Raithwall. As you stand in heaven with those who threw me out, and who I cannot help but believe will let at least _this_ prayer get through, I say it again.

This is for you, my friend.

---

And now we face Mateus and I find myself staring my other down even as Ashe summons me. And Mateus laughs because he was mightier than me before he stole the goddess of ice (who in another place was named Shiva) and thought himself even stronger now.

And in the place of ice and metal, I smile, because it is _Ashe _who has called me forth, and now, I hold her in the same reverence I do Raithwall. And so in honor of them both, I unleash my flames.

Mateus' screams of horror almost outpitch his screams of surprise.

---

_The hellfire so consumed Mateus that the one blow was all it ever took. Mateus soon bonded with another member of Ashe's party and they were all on their way, Belias deciding to remain out a little while longer in case Mateus left them any more surprises._

_And as Ashe passes him, leading them all as she always does, she flashes him a quick smile and says, " Thank you, my friend."_

_Belias' laughter went with him back into the summoning dark._

-R&R please!


	4. Weakness

Well! Might as well keep up the theme! Dedication to "…", who wanted either a Basch/Vaan centric piece or a Fran-centric. I'll also explain my idea.

Personally, I want to do this so that each few chapters is "character" centric- and I'll signify the end of a character's current section (which isn't saying there won't be more from that character!) with a Esper chapter. In short, we have 13 break points, 6 characters, and no actual order (with one exception: Zodiark will be the last chapter, and his summoner will be- with any luck- the ultimate surprise).

Basically, this means dedications will decide who goes in what order- though I really want everybody to get two non-continuous sections.

So. To "…", a Fran/Gun chapter.

(Don't worry, though; Vaan and spears is actually something I'll introduce later.)

(Guess who _has_ a Vaan equipped with spears, light armor, and white magic. Go on, guess.)

It's…

"SHOWTIME!"

Weakness

She thinks, sometimes, as she walks alongside the Humes that she has chosen to spend our her eternity near, that the only real difference between them is strength. It is not her ears or her height or the fact that her feet are pointed to the degree that without the bracing heels all Viera wear, she would fall over.

(She has always felt bad for the Hume women who try to mimic the Viera's step; the Hume foot is fine as it is, and they insist on torturing it.)

(In a race without difference, there is this one bonus: no Viera will kill herself for beauty.)

She thinks, sometimes, that it is the fact that Humes are weak that makes them so different. And it's a weakness not of physical strength- for Basch is one of the strongest beings she's ever met, Hume, Viera, Bangaa- but of _emotional_ strength, a weakness born of their desire to help others even when they were weak and to never, ever let their own weakness get in their way. It is their desire to help. That very concept is antithetical to the Viera way, where the wood and the Green Word and hatred for all weaker life is built into their very bones. A Viera would never help another. It would be a contradiction of the natural order.

She used to find the concept of helping others funny.

But then she remembers that while, as a Viera, she should hate these Humes, these weaklings, it is these weaklings who have helped her, too, when she was newly cast out and could no more find her way than she could hear the Green Word as an outcast. And Balthier, sweet Balthier, who'd offered her a drink of water in the deserts of Dalmasca when they first met, not because she was thirsting to death and was obviously in need of it but just because Balthier thought he should, was the man who'd shown her so much more than just kindness, because he gave her the sky, a free ticket on his _Strahl_ when he'd found her, and in the open sky she found her inner peace again.

(Does she love? Ask rather if the tree loves the lilly; she finds him beautiful, and wonderful, and utterly incomprehensible. She likes machines and she likes weapons, because both are cold and hard, much like her people. Balthier is fire and laughter and warmth.)

(It is asking logic to understand theater. And she is coming slowly to terms with their differences.)

And so Fran has come to this, clutching in her hands the one weapon she has never been trained in. All Viera undertake weapon training at a young age. Those who falter die.

(Over fifty years, she has learned guilt, and shame.)

But these weapons are not taught. Contrary to popular belief, the Viera are not anti-tech; they simply disapprove of Hume tech, which constantly attempts to overcome Hume weakness by adding onto their strength. Viera technology is designed to do something entirely different; it is meant to give the Viera abilities they do not have, which explains bows (for what Viera can kill what is not close to her?) and camouflage screens (because what Viera is born with leaves drawn on her skin?). The Viera do not approve of inventing tools that are designed to help one do what one already can. One does not forge brass knuckles, because one's own knuckles can hurt the foe, and if they cannot, that is one's own fault. And crutches, braces, splints? The concept is a joke.

(There is a reason the sister of the Wood-warder's leader cannot walk, in a world where Cure magicks can fix even the worst of wounds.)

Guns are the ultimate example of what the Viera call, translated from their tongue, the "other's problem", _Tjrnti_, the concept of being too weak to do anything. This concept is summed up by gunfire. Guns are a weapon that anyone can use, that does not require even the strength pulling a bowstring necessitates. (There is a reason crossbows are favored by some Viera- it requires more strength than most axes to wield, and they approve).

A gun is complicated, but easy to use- it must be loaded, pointed, and fired, and this requires no more strength than the weakest Hume possesses. There is a reason scholars and doctors of the broader world use guns in combat.

(This is a year before Fran ever meets Dr. Cid, but she will be utterly unsurprised with his choice of weapon when she does.)

And guns are slow; slow to the point that, without someone distracting the target, the gunner will almost always be set upon before firing a second shot. And the Viera will not help each other in that respect- in combat, each must hold their own, and while arrows _could_ support another being, they are never used to do so.

And yet…

This the weapon that showed so much of the Hume mindset, to Fran. This weapon, with its range and the slowness by which it is fired, was inherently meant to support- the opposite of the Viera belief. And in helping, in protecting, this weapon was mightier than any other.

And so, it is this weapon, that protects something other than itself, that uses its strength to defend _others_, to _help_, that Fran chooses to wield, because it is one of the many things- the very many things- that the Humes, and the Bangaa, and the Seeq, and all the lesser races in the world have given her, freely and of their own goodwill, often because they simply felt like it or believed it was owed.

This was her choice, to give in return what had been given to her, to support, even if- for now- it was only in battle.

-R&R please!


	5. Strong as a Willow

Well! I guess I might as well keep it up. Chapter Five, Fran and Poles, in honor of her demo equipment.

(I bought Dragon Quest VIII, back in a long ago darkness from which no light came. A FFXII demo came with it, which I didn't know at the time. I kept the demo and pitched the DQ game.)

(There are some things a man should _never_ buy, and a Dragon Quest game is one of them.)

Also, a big shout-out to Andrew Joshua Talon, who is both the only person I've met with a full name for his pen name and who appreciates guns on someone who is not male, Hume, and named Balthier. Give me a shout-out to dedicate, and I'll do so for you, lad! (That goes for everyone else, too.)

So, I guess there's nothing more to say than...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter Five

Strong as a Willow

Poles are strange weapons- one of the few that Fran found herself not liking when she was in weapon training, in the young, forgotten years of her seventies and eighties.

(She has tried, very hard, not to tell Balthier or anyone else in their party that she's well over three hundred years old- and at three centuries, she's not even a _middle-aged_ Viera yet.)

She was always fond of swords, and archery, because both are simple- aim at enemy here, loose arrows when enemy reaches there. And poles are not that kind of weapon, because they are both nowhere near as hard nor as simple as either the sword or the arrow.

" The sword," she remembers her teacher saying, a male Viera (no one knows this, but there are a surprising number of male Viera- they just look exactly like the women.) " is an oak, strong and straight. The bow is a yew- it bends a little, but snaps back rigid with great force. But poles are different. Poles are willows- their strength lies not in their ability to withstand, but their ability to _bend_. Just as a bow gains strength when it snaps back to straightness, so do poles gain strength through their very flexibility. Remember that, always."

And remember it she has, for Fran is not the sort to forget anything, save maybe what it was like to hear the Green Word in her tall, soft ears.

(Balthier once asked her what her ears felt like- he was curious, she'd said. She'd told him to feel them, if he liked.)

(He had.)

Such thoughts pass through her head as they head down to Muthru- the bazaar was packing a special that week- in Rabanastre, which had been taken over by Archadia over a year and a half ago.

After passing a young boy who'd looked carefully at their purses and then more carefully at the gun on Balthier's back before rubbing his nose and walking away, they ended up at the bazaar, where a Seeq was busy extolling the virtues of his spices. She stepped up to his stall

(Since they did need some new spices, the fish they'd bought in Balfonheim were almost tasteless)

And immediately noticed that he also had a weapon rack, one very well-polished and clean- surprising, in an area like Dalmasca, where street vendors hawked second-hand wares and the thrice-damned desert sand got into _everything_.

(Nono would never forgive them for going into Dalmasca- the moogle hated cleaning sand out of engines.)

So she asked to look at the pole he had there, a great long one with little rivets on the end where it was meant to strike an enemy. And the Seeq nodded and began extolling the virtues of the pole for a long, slender fighter such as herself, which Fran noticed with something like bemusement was spot-on, which was rather strange for a fat Seeq merchant in the middle of a city. Apparently, he'd done some fighting in his time, because he knew what he was talking about when he said that poles were good weapons for getting in under an opponent's guard, because the way they bent, all flexible until they _snapped_ and struck, made them hard to predict; hard to get a shield up in time, or to try and catch it on the thick armor of shoulder guards or the vambrace rather than the comparatively weaker armor of the helm or breastplate. It was one reason magical defenses- which didn't really rely on timing at all anyway- were preferred when dealing with poles.

So while listening to the Seeq talk weapons with her, hearing Balthier respond with questions and comments that eventually turned the conversation to guns, Fran looked over the pole.

This weapon was not her.

But this weapon _was_ a good one, made of strong wood and good steel. And she'd grown tired of archery and _someone_ had to be out there, fighting the enemy, while Balthier reloaded his gun as quickly as he could.

(He'd once quipped, while reloading his gun in the face of an angry Urstrix, that it would be ever so kind for Fran to come over and help him when she felt like it- not standing on a nearby hilltop out of the way.)

And this weapon... she could _move_ with it. She could see now, as she held it, how flexible it was, how strong, and she realized that while she had always liked that stiffness and strength in swords and bows, she could truly use a weapon like this, moving swift as the wind.

She bought it that day.

And the next time she was in battle, she flipped, spun, struck- and was proud. This weapon was her choice, because it made her strong as a willow, and she felt- from its flexibility and speed- free.

-And DQ games aren't that bad, they're worse. :)

R&R everybody!


	6. A Ruler Always

You know, "tropical Viking" may be my favorite description of an FFXII character _ever_.

(cheers)

Henceforth! Here's an Esper chapter, with Mateus, the one Esper I sincerely dislike- what a weiner! He had to steal Shiva to become powerful in the first place!

(laughs)

Anyway, Basch's section begins next, with Andrew Joshua Talon's excellent suggestion!

(Since I'll just end up repeating it in Basch's chapter, I'll say nothing about the weapon set-up here.)

And so! Onwards to the greatest frozen fish this side of a certain vampire's icy tuna!

(If you get the joke, you play too many video games!)

It's….

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter Six

A Ruler Always

Ruler have I always been.

I have ruled over the forces of the underworld the day Addramalech came, his mouth shouting holy words that burned us as his thundering fists hammered the dark. I have ruled when, finally, days and years after he first came to drive back the demons, we succeeded in corrupting him and he took his place as _our_ emperor, and not lord among the scions of darkness. I have ruled from the shadows when the scion of light, great Ultima, fell, skin turning green with envy and hatred and her holy light becoming the burning death that comes from the sun and makes the bodies of men rot from the inside.

(I have heard it called cancer.)

Ruler I was in life, for this was not my original form. I was Emperor somewhere else, too, and when I died, the gods decided that I deserved a second chance, for though I'd done much evil, I'd been driven to it by forces outside my control.

(Perhaps they believed it themselves.)

So they gave me control of the underworld, the power, specifically, to bind and chain, and told me to watch over it. And so I did.

Time passed, long slow centuries.

Eventually, Addramalech arrived, and after his corruption I ignored him, because he was the sort of "emperor" appeased best by large thrones and large pomp and lots and lots of prestige. He was emperor in name only.

I have ever and _always_ been ruler.

So then the chance I was waiting for came.

(Eternity has many advantages.)

Ultima fell, brightest of angels and the only one of us not a scion of darkness. She fell to the underworld, and her form became twisted, gears and ticks and long tubes of metal running where her legs, so bright and so sleek, used to be. I could not have cared less.

It was her _hatred_ that I cared for. Ultima rose, once again, determined to grab the birthright she had proven herself unworthy of. And so, with my aid, she convinced Addramalech to join us, and then others came, too- the cast out Belias, a whispering horse woman, things before and after my time in the physical realm.

(I remember when Zeromus came to us, mad and lonely.)

Only one could we not convince, but we decided we did not need him, child that he was, incapable of understanding that if we won here, the universe would be changed.

(It amuses me yet that the only power that walked with us not was darkness, while it was light that was leading the way. Such is the nature of the universe.)

We went to war; the universe has never seen such a fight. It was us against _them_; no more needed to be said because _them_ was everybody else. We marched on the elemental dimensions and the physical world first, and it was in the Demesne of Ice I received a certain… gift, courtesy of a poor lass whose name I think was Shiva.

The power to bind can be very useful if one is creative enough to bind things to _oneself_.

But we did not succeed. We destroyed their servants on the demesnes of the elements and victory was coming in the physical realm. But just as we marched on the final gate, the door of some new place of light and beauty, the gate of Heaven, something happened.

New forces arose, and we found, to our fear, that we could not harm them. And just as these… these _heroes_ came out of those great golden doors, so too did heroes arise on the world below, one a man out of a dream and the other a woman who met him when her red-haired friend introduced them on the day she learned to summon. And just then, as the world below us screamed from the death of our servant (time flows faster down there), so too did the heroes of the door strike us down.

(I remember a woman with green hair and fire in her eyes and a sword that sang blue. I have never seen it's like.)

(There are things that terrify the dark.)

When I awoke, having fallen burning through space after being defeated, I was being banished.

(Zodiark, the one who would not join, the Esper who stayed true to the higher calling, was the one who did the deed. I shall make him pay.)

I was being banished, but just as I was falling away, I remembered that I'd captured Shiva. I'd smiled.

They hadn't known.

So when they banned me, blocked me from existing in their realms, I revealed, right at the very end, just when they couldn't reverse what they had done, that I still had Shiva- and as they screamed their horror, I escaped, swam through the endless universe to arrive at Ivalice, free at last from gods and demons and the sound of a woman who had seen the secret at the beginning of everything, perhaps even of the gods.

But a Gran Kiltias- damn him!- found me and bound me, placing my form and Shiva's in a tomb of magic and holy will to guard something. To this day, I know not what it is I guard.

(The man I am bound to, a Balthier, refuses to let me out for longer than it takes for me to save their lives- perhaps knowing me well enough to realize my capacities to do harm, even under a seal.)

So now I wait, languishing under glyph, still waiting. It has not been long now, a mere few centuries. Such time is nothing to me or to her, the one I have bound to my chest to act as my shield.

(She still refuses to speak to me and her only sounds are screams. I am content. I did not chain her for her ability to stun me with words.)

But they have all forgotten that I am ruler. I never performed evil for any reason other than to rule. I am Order, taken to its furthest extent; the reach of Law when Law commands the night. I am the creature that will rule this universe if anyone can and will destroy it if I cannot. I have been weakened, I have been beaten, but never have I been stopped.

(Even Ultima was just a tool of mine, though she does not know it.)

I will rule this universe yet. No human lives forever and even the will of the one who calls himself Balthier cannot hold me back forever. I will find that woman of green hair and I will banish her soul.

(I cannot destroy a soul and don't need to.)

I will march on the gates of Heaven and tear it down.

I am Emperor and I rule forever and _always_.

-

_Scientific Report #492, Draklor Laboratories, Researcher F.G._

_Subject: Esper_

_Designation: Mateus, the Corrupt_

_Re: Annual Report_

_Body: We are sorry to report, your highness, that while the sky pirate Balthier was not entirely incorrect when he said that the Esper's main problem was "megalomania", we have found that megalomania seems to be the main problem with _all_ the Espers, and Mateus is merely another in a long line of deluded spirit beings who want to destroy the gods, all that is good, and you and me. He's been utterly unhelpful in research on ice magicite which was the main purpose in bringing him here and, since he won't help, we've stopped asking; it turns out he knows nothing anyway, since it's the goddess strapped to his chest who has all the real power. We are henceforth attempting to free the Ice goddess chained to his spirit in order to continue our research and are making good progress with the help of the Esper Belias that the Queen Ashelia B'nargan Dalmasca has so kindly donated for this purpose. Mateus is utterly corrupted, as his name suggests, and we believe that we should rebind him somewhere once we are finished, as his psychotic tendencies and habit of making long-winded speeches makes him alternatively dangerous and dull._

_On a side note, Belias is a surprisingly wonderful fellow and is quite likeable once you get past the strangeness of his form. He states that he hasn't been out for so long in centuries and we've learned quite a lot of history from him. He's also mentioned some facts about fire magicite and he's greatly advanced our knowledge on the subject._

_Unfortunately he also has a tendency to heat up the room he's living in until the condition are nigh unbearable, and we will need more ice magicite within the week if we are to continue talking to him from a distance of less than fifteen feet away._

_Signed to Emperor Larsa with all respect,_

_Firion Gab'rel the second_

_Head Researcher of Draklor Laboratories_


	7. I Protect

Now with the obligatory Esper break chapter over with, I can begin to explain the "tropical viking" comment! Joshua Andrew Talon announced that he liked Basch with Axes and Hammers, because he looked like... well... what it says in the previous sentence. Finding this far too hilarious to not write, and having declared I'd do dedications, well...

Here you go.

By the by, did anybody else know that Mateus is actually a reference to the big bad guy of Final Fantasy II? The Emperor of Palamecia is, in fact, referenced by Mateus, just like Zeromus, Exdeath, and Chaos, though the Mateus reference is a _lot_ more obscure.

(Considering the Emperor didn't even have a name... well, guess they did the best they could.)

This also explains my inspiration for the chapter. Truth is, some of the Espers- Mateus and Shemhazai- are not particularly sympathetic and are more raw _evil_, with italics intended. Shemhazai taught man to do harm to his fellow man, and Mateus kidnapped Shiva to get stronger. While others, like Zodiark, Famfrit, and especially Belias are more sympathetic and seem more "caught up in events" than really leading evil, I can't really find it in my heart to _like_ some of them, Mateus in particular for some reason.

I guess I don't approve of my ice summon being taken over by a _fish_. Though I will admit Frostwave is my favorite summon animation so far.

(Can't wait to see what Chaos can do.)

Anyway, I'll finish up quick here. I'd also like a public service announcement on behalf of Vayne Solidor. You have not beat the game yet, don't read this.

Here it is.

_Vayne Solidor, thank you for showing us that not all martial artists are good, decent, kind people trying to save the world. Some of them are, in fact, psycho._

_And for turning into Conan halfway through the fight, thank you. That's the kind of disturbing mental image that makes me scream. Thanks._

Okay! With that over with, it's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter Seven

I Protect

Basch protects.

He thinks that the very first thing he learned as a Knight of Landis was that he was meant to protect. 21, full of fire and vigor, as crazed as his friends and just as likely to go off on a _madhu_-inspired binge that would see him screaming that he was king from a nearby rooftop, he was not a man who had deep thoughts. But one thing kept him going, one thing burned in his soul, and that was his desire to _protect_.

(His mother sometimes called him "Guardian", because he was always saving Noah from all sorts of things that even his mother didn't think that dangerous. He didn't care. They _might_ have hurt him.)

And Basch learned, in the knighthood, that the concept that went with power- because Landis knights were famed for their strength- was humility. Even the mightiest must, each day, give their all for the weakest, because only in that- as the Kiltias who lived there taught them- was their real love to be had in the world.

(Basch remembers a story, of a knight, great and powerful, who stopped one day to give a little girl a rose because she was a poor little waif. Curled up in a petal was a bank note for over a thousand gold pieces and in the center were the keys to the knight's summer home so she and her family could have a roof over their heads. The little girl grew up to become the knight who taught Basch how to handle his weapons.)

So Basch became older, wiser, stopped drinking, and eventually came the day he would receive his first weapon. 25, finished with Akademy, going on to become a real knight whose weapons didn't have dulled edges. It was a vast ceremony and each knight was to choose the weapon that suited them most. In Landis, land of warriors and knights, a weapon was more than just a tool- it was a measure of the soul.

(Gabranth's weapon- a double-headed spear- represents obedience above all. There is a reason Gabranth wields it rather than a sword.)

Basch shocked even himself when he chose the hammer.

Hammers are not weapons used by many. They are hard to hit with, because one swings with all one's might, telegraphing the blow. You can't half-heartedly swing a hammer, or even swing it with skill. You hit stuff with it, preferably in the face, really hard. And that's it. Hammer training is simple, though axe is considerably more complicated. The only virtue given was that those who held hammers were those who believed that with force, force could be destroyed.

(Although each weapon had a virtue attached, they also came with a vice. The hammer's vice was that it was considered the weapon of oafs- well-meaning oafs, but oafs all the same.)

But Basch chose this weapon for a different reason.

Just like one cannot really do much with a hammer beyond strike, there's also little can do _against_ it either. That very simplicity drives the weapon to devastate opponents because, while one can dodge it and get around it and will do this often, one will screw up _eventually_. And when that happens, the hammer will hurt worse than any other weapon in the world.

And so Basch wields a hammer, because he cannot be ignored with it in hand. You cannot ignore a hammer. Because even if that last hit wasn't so hard, maybe didn't even land, the next hit might, in fact, be the last you ever take. It's playing with loaded dice- eventually, you'll lose.

So all the monsters, when they see him swinging his hammer, rush over to attack him. He's more dangerous, in their eyes, then all his companions put together. Penelo slices and Ashe casts magics. Balthier can heal them and also give a hard hit with the sword he carries. Vaan's spear pierces organs and Fran's bullets puncture skin.

But Basch's hammer can do many things and none at all, so they attack him. _They don't know what he can do, and it scares them to death. _Better to fight the devil they know than the devil they don't.

Basch protects. And he cannot protect those who are getting attacked. So he will put his hope into hammer and shield, one to guard him and the other to guard his friends. And his hammer is his oath.

_With this hammer, I will guard and save and bring hope to the life of others, as a Knight of Landis must._

(He has never forgotten those words.)

Basch protects, and that was the oath he took, so long ago.

It was always his choice.

-R&R please!


	8. Honor

Hey everybody! I'm back. So... new dedication! The anonymous poster Josh wants to see Basch with a specific weapon this time- Save the Queen. Being intrigued because it was on a _specific_ weapon rather than a weapon type, you see me here today.

And out of curiosity, how many people read the _Vayne_ comments last chapter? Just wondering- no one mentioned it ;). Maybe I only thought I put those up...

Anyway, thanks to all my reviewers, and keep 'em coming! Also, shout-out to new reviewer, Captain Lynza.

(But I'm Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg of Dalmasca!... I so apologize for that joke.)

And now, it's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter Eight

Honor

Honor is the touch of the waves to the sky and the slow solemn promise that they will always be there. Honor is never stopping the battle for what you believe in and honor is your belief that you can do what it is you wish to. Honor is what Basch believes in.

This is what he believes in.

When he sees Ashe, though, his thoughts get confused, sometimes, because all he wants to say sometimes is

(I'm sorry I could not save our country)

And then his thoughts clear and he can say " My lady you seem hurt." Because Ashe will push herself where no one else will and is the last of them- the very last of them- to ask for help.

(Once, blood streaming out of a wound and the Mist gone dry around them, she fought on as if nothing was wrong; the Stillshrine was being painted scarlet behind her. Basch could barely get a potion down her throat in time.)

So when he gets a chance he tells her to sleep, because Ashe's idea of a good night's rest is three hours of disjointed nightmares and an awakening before the sun gets up. And it takes all they can do sometimes to _make_ her sleep, to _make_ her stop- her will is that strong. Two years has changed her from the innocent, happy little princess he once knew.

(She used to call him "Corn-head" when she was feeling playful for the way his blond hair shined in the sunlight. In return, he called her "Helmet-head" for the way her hair framed her face like a visor. He misses those days.)

She is also, of them, the one most dismissive of treasure. The real treasure, she insists, is waiting for them at the end of the road- the Sword of Kings, the Dawn Shard, the freedom of the people of Dalmasca. Whichever it is she currently hunts, she is focused on that above all else and so doesn't really care for exploring the old tombs and shrines they enter, to find things that were placed there alongside the great treasures. So she scowls at Vaan when he says "Give me a sec" and runs off and comes back with all kinds of treasures. Basch thinks she shouldn't.

The boy has become their main source of funds.

But one day, while marching through the holy land of Giruvegan, a holy land mentioned in no books of the Kiltia or any other sect Basch had bothered to read (though the Glabados church was fond of it, so he was told), Vaan came back with an enormous sword in his arms, almost, comically, as big as he was.

" What is that?" Ashe snaps, sitting down for a break- one that Penelo had managed to convince her they needed, complaining of a sprained ankle.

(They've all worked out a system to force the princess to rest.)

Penelo, un-sprained ankles working fine, jumps up to see.

" Vaan? What is that?" she tries to peer over Fran's head, but the Viera's tall ears get in the way. Figuring that just moving them aside would be rude (not to mention possibly life-threatening), Penelo finally hops around her for a closer look.

" A greatsword!" Vaan proclaims smartly, mostly because that's the way he was; most questions elicited stupid answers from the young Hume. He was smart as a tack but lazy, in Basch's opinion- or maybe he just went through stages of both.

Then Vaan winks at them and puts it point first on the ground, hand on the hilt. " Found it in an armory, guarded by some Behemoths. Slipped right past them and took it, they didn't see a thing. Only thing in there not rusted or busted, though the sharpening wheel looked well-used. Guess that's what the Behemoths had the room for- sharpening those huge knives of cleaving doom."

He steps closer to them, experimentally trying to swing the sword- he needs both hands to do it. " It says "Save the Queen" on the blade," Vaan continued, " and even I can tell it's enchanted- though how, I leave up to our resident Viera."

Fran is about to look it over with the eyes that see what a Hume's cannot when Basch speaks.

(He can't believe what he's about to say.)

" Save the Queen," he announced, causing his party to look at him, " was an old legend in my kingdom. Supposedly, a powerful knight had a weapon forged, and called it Save the Queen, because that was the knight's job: she protected the Queen." Recalling old trips down memory lane as quickly as he could, Basch continued, " And one day, she came home from a trip to find the Queen dead, killed by her own daughter. In grief and fury, the knight assaulted the princess- who was the new Queen. Save the Queen became a joke, to the people, a memory of the knight who failed to protect her own queen and killed the next one."

Vaan is stunned, because in the first place, Basch is talking, and in the second place, that was far too complicated a backstory for a simple weapon like this. There wasn't even much ornamentation on the guard. " So this weapon was named after it?"

Basch went over to him and picked it up. " No, Vaan," he said, looking it over and feeling it _throb_ beneath his hand.

(This weapon wants to hurt someone. Badly.)

" It _is_ that sword," and the hushed voices of his party are enough to tell Basch that they believe him... for now.

The sword throbs in his hand, and Basch wonders what he's going to do with it.

--

Basch finally figures out what he's going to do with it. He's going to wield it.

Not because he's good with greatswords. (He's good, but he's that way with all weapons.)

No, Basch chooses to wield Save the Queen because- in some odd way- he feels akin to that great knight of long ago who had it made. Basch swore to protect his king, and his country, and his people. And he failed all of them, miserably.

But...

He thinks that he hasn't completely failed yet, because Ashe is still alive and every time he makes her sleep when her mind screams for her to push on, every time he makes her drink a potion even though she insists that it's "just a scratch, I've had worse", every time he makes this woman take one step out of her grief and rage... he is protecting her. And he is making up for the things he has failed to do.

It is at these times he notices that his sword stops throbbing when he feels like he is protecting Ashe, and it throbs strongest when he thinks of his failures.

Basch cannot be sure, but he has come to know this sword, and he feels certain that the blade wants only one thing, and that is to live up to its name. It wants to Save the Queen. It wants to _protect_, and only the horrid incidents after its creation have given it the throbbing desire to _kill_. And maybe it is not a desire to kill after all. Maybe it is only honor wrecked, honor lost, that gives it this throbbing.

Honor is protecting Ashe because that is what he swore to do. Honor is being who he was despite everything that has happened to him. Honor is guarding and it is protecting.

Honor is holding on to this sword and swearing that he'll protect Ashe and making this choice to wield this sword, because it is power he might need.

And when he does that, the throbbing in his hand stops for a moment.

-R&R please!


	9. Learning

You know, Josh, when you wrote "Holy Sheit!" I almost thought you said Sheik, with a k.

(Images of an Arab- well- _Sheik_ just went straight through my head.)

Thanks for your kind words. ;)

And to Captain Lynza, glad you liked last chapter! I really like Basch, and kind of by accident gave him a dumbass' voice in the last chapter. So Save the Queen was my way of making up for it.

(I think Save the Queen is my current favorite chapter.)

Anyhoo, it's time to move on! Montolang wants Fran with an axe, but! That will have to wait until the next Fran-centric piece. If it's any consolation, that most definitely will appear, because _my_ Fran has an axe! And shields and heavy armor.

(I found it funny to give the woman wearing the least amount of clothing- the "fanservice" character, and come on, we _all_ know that's what Fran's meant for- the heavy armor. I have a weird sense of humor.)

(Come on, I play _Shadow Hearts_. It don't get much weirder than that- and I'm looking at _you_, Tiger. ;)

To all my reviewers, thanks! Time for an obligatory Esper chapter! This time, it's the... thing... that is Shemhazai!

(Is anyone else UTTERLY DISTURBEDby the visage of a woman with a horse's ass for a head?)

It's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter Nine

Learning

I haven't learned much, in my long centuries of existence.

That's the first thing I have learned since being bound to this glyph.

Everyone else learned something- I, I of the death magic and the ruler of the underworld, one of many such rulers, learned nothing.

(I still think that I am far too dull-witted for this world, perhaps believing too much in my own causes to learn.)

I used to try to rule and rule well, but grew tired of listening to Mateus' "advice" on each issue- he was always there, ruler in practice if not in theory- and so I took to wandering. The click of my hooves on the paths of the underworld became a common sound, and somewhere along the way I upgraded my crossbows to become almost-guns, strings loosing blasts of black devastation.

(I'm rather fond of the way human revolvers look and feel, but my crossbows are the last enchanted item I have left and can only be modified so much.)

I had some vague idea when I left of becoming a hero because you'd be surprised how much the spirits of darkness need a hero. Our Demesne is no different from the Demesnes of other places, other times. We live, we laugh, we love. We are not the afterlife, as some mortals- humans in particular- have thought us to be.

(We were not always called the underworld- long ago, we were the Demesne of Shadow.)

So eventually I wandered back, a new king in my old place- Addramalech, I heard him called. And I wanted, more than anything, to lead this new king to brightness in my place, where I could not. I think I had some dim dream of being chancellor to this new king, lead him in and out of pitfalls.

He was too corrupted when I met him for my words to mean as much as air.

So I took again to wandering, and legends perpetuated, of the one true queen of the underworld who walked the roads of the shadowed realm and gave help to passersby, who resembled one of the centaurs of some of the worlds in the material realm. I became something of a hero, bizarrely.

(Few would think that now.)

Some centuries later I managed to reach the royal grounds again. By coincidence, that was the same time Ultima fell.

What a simple way to describe such an enormous event. Ultima fell. Two words, ten thousand meanings.

The world above us thundered and crashed; the echoes of the war in the sky shook our land til it came near to bursting. We three rulers, Addramalech, Mateus, and I, grabbed the nearest objects to hold onto as a great blazing comet burst out of the sky, screaming. The spirits of darkness clung to us, their Espers, for protection from the creature that had fallen so far.

(I remember thinking they were like children- spoiled children, perhaps, nasty little brats, but children all the same. I wonder how much of darkness' evil is our fault, me and Addramalech and Mateus, because of the Espers only we three ever ruled the dark realm. Maybe the existence of its evil is our fault. I know that the blame, if it exists, lies heaviest on my shoulders- they were my people first.)

We could have done something grand then, we three rulers. We could have saved our people and destroyed Ultima, completing the gods' work, or perhaps just contained her, kept the universe safe from her madness. In her weakness, it would barely have required our great strength.

We did not, as history has shown.

I remember little of the war, save a girl with the wind blowing through her hair and twin guns that smelled like rust and smoke. She nearly blew me in twain.

(How ironic.)

Darkness.

-

When I awoke, we were being sentenced. Mateus was still unconscious, and was to be sealed last. I barely heard murmured whispers as the gods sentenced the others, but when they spoke to me my mind shook.

I will not say what they said; such words cannot truly be written down any more than they can be communicated in words. They were a _feeling_, something of the spirit. The gist of it was that I was damned.

But maybe not for forever.

Have I made my choice, as the boy who took me- one whose name is Vaan- has? Have I made my choice?

I've learned so very little.

Could it be... enough?

I never wanted this...

I don't even know if I want redemption. But I do know this.

I want this doubt and this fear- to stop.

-

_Shemhazai rode with them through long dark paths and never once faltered on the way. Vaan took a liking to the quiet Esper with the almost-guns and would keep her summoned whenever the Mist was thick. Though Shemhazai was not as inherently vicious a fighter as most of the other Espers (Addramalech the prime example), she was much more dangerous than they were- one shot from her was all it took._

_(Vaan joked at times that it was the image of a creature with a horse's ass attached to its head that actually killed them- the bullets were just incidental. It was the only thing he ever said that provoked a real reaction out of the startled Esper- she just _looked_ at him, eyes huge.)_

_(Vaan, realizing he might well die in the next few seconds, promptly dismissed her.)_

_Vaan, traveling his trail, did not know that the Esper bound to him felt much the same way he did- confused, angry, afraid half the time at the idea of not knowing enough. However, Vaan never let it get to him, kept living, surviving on sheer bravado and will._

_The ancient Esper, millenia-old, found herself admiring this almost-man, this boychild. She learned that his way of living could be a _good_ way to live... and she eventually decided to try it._

_Like Vaan, she eventually found her answers. Maybe even learned something in the process._

_Centuries later, the gods greeted her as she walked back through the gate into the Demesne of Shadow. This time, she was there to stay._

_It was her choice and- in some way- Vaan's too._


	10. A Father's Pride

Hey everybody! Glad you all liked last chapter. "..." raised a good point, which is that earlier I'd claimed she was evil. She _is_... but after you write Mateus' chapter, you really need to cleanse the system, so to speak. I needed to write a "evil Shemhazai" chapter, but couldn't bring myself to do it.

Henceforth, Good Shemhazai came forth. Not a bad chapter.

With any luck, though, the evilness will be made up for when I write Ultima's chapter. Stay tuned. :)

Shout-outs to new reviewers! Dynast-Kid, B.Szoke, Mighty Crouton, Asmi-chan, and morgan colbourne! Thanks for reviewing!

Wow, everybody likes the Esper chapters. I'm kind of glad you do... I always thought that the Espers, Belias in particular, needed a voice.

I mean, c'mon, the guy's got two heads. Least we can do for him. ;)

This chapter, we begin everyone's favorite earring-wearing smooth-talking blond-haired sky pirate!

(If you say Vaan, you're wrong!)

With that, it's now...

"SHOWTIME!"

A Father's Pride

One time, long ago, little Ffamran looked at his daddy

(_I want to be just like him_ he thought, _with a beard and glasses and everything_)

and asked him what made some men use swords and some men use guns.

(_Like my daddy!_ Little Ffamran would think, upon hearing this sentence.)

" Because, my dear son," his daddy said, in a great deep voice that his son loved to hear, " some men like to fight and some like to study. And if you study, you don't have time to fight, so you have to find a weapon that can support you anyway. A sword is a weapon for a man who fights and a gun is a weapon for a man who doesn't."

" So which is better?" Little Ffamran asked, eyes wide. He just knows his daddy is going to say guns, because Daddy has guns, great big pistols that look beautiful to young Ffamran's eyes and shine and sparkle. Cid at this point has killed nothing intelligent and only a few of the monsters that assault _everyone_ around the city of Archades.

" Depends, " Cid said with a big smile on his face, " but that's for another night. Because now," a little wink, and Ffamran is scooped up before he can speak, " you have to go to bed."

And then he playfully struggled with Ffamran all the way up to the boy's bed in the upper room.

It is this memory- and those like it- that plague the man named Balthier. It is the good memories, and not the bad ones, that hurt him the most.

But he remembers them anyway, because there's far too much happiness in those memories- the same happiness that has driven Balthier to seek his freedom in the skies- for him to ever forget, and they are the reason that the weapon lying next to him is a sword.

So in that place between wakefulness and sleep, his turn at watch over for the night, Balthier dreams.

-

" Son," Cid says, and little Ffamran, who's a teenager at this point and less shy than a drunk Seeq (and having made his way into the diaries of far too many young ladies for the peace of mind of the fathers of Archades), listens to him. " I've noticed you looking at the judges lately."

Ffamran nods. The judges are everything he wants to be- men with the authority and the power to change the world. He has seen what his father has done in his area of work, seen him build things no one else could ever envision. He wants to be like his father, change the world, and because he will not overstep his father in the field of design, he will do so in the realm of law. Ffamran will, if he can, write his name on the stage of history.

(Childhood dreams are always real, and we can always achieve them if we try. Balthier simply managed to fulfill his in a somewhat different way than he had originally imagined it.)

Ffamran has taken naturally to physical training and has- somewhat on the sly- begun to study weapons, though he doesn't have a favorite yet. He's actually pretty good with all of them, if his training with a certain streetear is to be believed.

" However," Cid says, looking at his young son

(I can't let him know how damn proud I am of him, he thinks, so young and strong and smart)

" I refuse to let you have Jules teach you anymore."

Ffamran nearly chokes. That was... surprising. He'd thought no one, much less his father, knew. Cid tries not to smile as he continues before Ffamran, who almost always has something to say, can speak.

" And so I will teach you fighting myself."

The father's been taking training on the sly too.

His just happens to be from Judge Magister Bergan. Cid won't ever be a swordsman of any count, but he'll be _damned_ before he lets some streetear teach his child anything.

Ffamran, a teenager who could think up a comment in the face of the devil, is at a loss for words.

Cid smiles as he takes two wooden training swords out of a box near him and tosses one to his teenaged son.

_Bet I'm still tougher than he is,_ Cid thinks with a grin as he begins to walk forward for him and his son's first lesson together.

Turned out he was, too.

-

_My father_, Balthier thinks as he drifts in and out of sleep and waking both, _was really, really quick with a sword but couldn't use a shield to save his life._

It is in these peaceful moments that Balthier forgets that someday, he may have to use that knowledge to kill his own father.

(Sometimes, he wonders if he will ever find a concept in his life more defining than the idea that _my father has gone insane_.)

And so Balthier practiced, and one of those little jokes of fate came around to it- because Bergan only used swords and would barely acquiesce to using a shield in his off-hand, Cid never learned other fighting styles. And Balthier was trained by Cid, so he never trained in anything else. But he didn't want to. He _liked_ sword and shield training, liked that you could block and _then_ kill, because it fit with his theatrical sensibility. It was flashy, somehow, this ability to block their attacks like it was nothing and then strike them dead in the blink of an eye. Two weapons in each hand seemed dramatic, as well, because Cid taught him to be aggressive with it, and he learned that the only difference between a shield and a sword is that one cuts and the other bashes.

(Once, surrounded by enemy forces, Balthier managed to kill three members of a Rozarrian scout force- never let it be said that the borders of empires are not prodded daily- with just his shield alone, his sword having been lost in the surprise attack. It was the highlight of his career and earned him a medal.)

Balthier was one of only a hundred judges to ever come out of the Akademy who'd never been trained by an actual arms master, and like all those hundred, it was his father who taught him how to fight. Unlike those other hundred, however, Balthier's father wasn't a judge to begin with.

(Zargabaath's dad was a Magister before him, as his grandmother was before him, and her father before her. Zargabaath plans to raise his daughter the same way. Some things never change.)

Balthier loved his sword and shield, because, to tell truth, it fit with his own personality. Keep a bit of yourself back, and then strike. A lot like him, really, and he liked that.

His father was quite proud of him, because after the fifth practice session he never beat his son at swordplay again.

Balthier drifts off a final time, and a third dream, one that makes him squeeze his eyes tight in memory, takes hold.

-

" Son," Cid says, and he's smiling, huge grin through the beard like white pillars in a field of brown grass. " You've done it. You're a judge now."

" Yes, Father," little Ffamran says, except now he's bigger than his father and the armor makes him look even larger, like a dragon disguised as a man. He's done it, he's made it. He's a judge, and tears are running down his cheeks even though he told himself he would not cry. He takes a second to bless the helmet on his head, because he'd be embarassed for his father to see him cry. He, Ffamran, the genius son of Dr. Cidolfus Bunansa, does not cry. Not much, anyway.

His father is so proud of him.

" And now!" Cid laughs, stepping back as he looks proudly at the son who has become a man. " A gift!"

And before his son's eyes, Cid unveils a sword of such startling beauty that Ffamran almost weeps again. Next to it is a shield.

" For you," Cid says, and smiles again, and his son weeps beneath his helm.

Quietly.

(It wouldn't do to forget propriety.)

-

It is these memories that Balthier keeps quiet within him when he wakes in the morning, roused by whoever their watch is, to step out into the brand new day and pit himself against the Empire. That past is the reason he has a sword and a shield.

But he keeps them now for a different reason. The latter memories are the ones that made him take up the sword, the stuff of legends and dreams. Swords are the weapons of heroes, or so he thought, and shields are, likewise, something all great heroes have ever had.

(Balthier's years watching the theater in Archades have never left him.)

But it is the idea that swords are weapons of destruction that keeps Balthier using them. That first memory has become the reason for his choice. The man who once was Ffamran is meant to destroy, to wipe out, to eliminate the evils of his own father from the world. And for that reason he cannot wield a gun, a weapon of protection, because that is not what he is here for. He is here to destroy.

And so strapped to his side is the sword his father left him so many years ago.

It was always his choice.

-R&R please!


	11. To Know Wind

Hey everybody! Shout-out to new reviewers- King Dragun, NanoMecka, and Tokimi-chan! Good to have you onboard!

Wow, response to last chapter was great. And weirdly, I wrote it entirely to the image of a picture shown at the end of the game. If you beat it, you know what it is, if you haven't, spoilers

(Abound here)

Are coming up, so don't read if you don't wanna know! Just skip to the big "SHOWTIME!" you should know by now.

...Still reading? Okay, here goes.

It's a scene of Dr. Cid holding a little baby Balthier- or Ffamran, at this point- and smiling like all fathers do when they hold their firstborn child- goofy and happy and ridiculous all at the same time. It's beautiful and wonderful and heart-warming and makes me feel _sad_ that I killed the bastard. Just to add spice to the proceedings, he's also quite possibly the most annoying villain in the game. Both times you fight him, he figures out how to be invincible, and readies the LARGEST CHAINGUN IN THE WORLD for the second round, which actually scared the crap out of me when I first saw it.

(Talk about wtf moments.)

Anyway, those readers who don't want to be spoiled have waited long enough! Time for a happier chapter- or, at least, one without the bittersweet frosting. It's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 11

To Know Wind

Balthier is the sort of man who lives life running, because that is how he likes it- the boredom of constant days was something he'd experienced enough as a soldier. Once a judge, either always a judge or never a judge again. That was the way of the world.

Balthier knows the world, knows it like the back of his hand.

He knows it because he has surfed it; he knows it because he has flown it in azure strands that nobody else but him and his copilot could pick out. Balthier has a sky pirate's eyes; they are the same eyes that look at a man when a hawk gazes upon him. They are cold and bright and brilliant and full of all the life in the world.

And something all hawks and all sky pirates know is that, at times, all they need in life is a straight shot and sure speed, and they can get through any trouble. Balthier may not be the best shot in the world with his Strahl's cannons, but no one would doubt his ability to avoid fire in combat, waggling his double-jointed wings in defiance of the fiercest enemy fire.

(Once, he had faced an entire dreadnought, thousands of red guns blazing molten death skywards, and he and the Strahl had come out completely unharmed and with the added bonus of blowing a few chunks of the enemy airship to smithereens. That was the day his legend began.)

Balthier knows this, knows about wind. He knows the air and the sky the way some men know their lover's bodies or the way Vaan knows who he can rob and who will notice his hand before it reaches their purse.

Actually, speaking of that former, there's another person Balthier knows like he knows the wind. It's Fran, his tall, beautiful Viera companion. And he really, really wants to aid her, but he was taught to be a marksman and lacks the physical strength to help his long-eared companion in battle directly. And so, he must shoot.

So it should have been no surprise when, one day, he began to carry a bow.

-

Balthier had always liked guns, but there was always the problem of angles. Bullets came out of the gun at a completely flat, straight angle, not deviating or changing a single bit. That was good, when you had a clear shot and there was no reason not to fire straight ahead; but often, you don't have a straight shot, or your partner (or partners, as Balthier would think when he joined Ashe's crew half a year later) is in there fighting the monsters and you can't afford to hit her too. Guns had problems.

Crossbows, on the other hand, were no better, because the bolt fired out almost as fast and- unlike a gun- usually didn't have sights to help you aim. If anything, they were worse- a gun always fired blind, no help to his problem at all.

So he started carrying a bow.

Arrows could be fired like a gun- pull back far enough, and the pressure can build to the point that for a pretty good distance the arrow will fly straight. However, you have a lot more control over a bow than you do a gun, because in the end it's really your arm supplying all the power which controls the arrow. So Balthier began to practice with it, and soon found his style.

He knows the wind. So when Fran is in there fighting with the pole she carries like a whirlwind in black, Balthier can shoot straight up- and down his arrow goes, piercing the brain of some large creature as the upper wind currents shove the arrow down and out. He can shoot barely to the side of his partner and watch the breeze shift it just enough as it passes her to slam home deep in some creature's hairy chest, killing it instantly. He can use the breeze to help her more than he ever could with bullets, which fly too true to pull off the same tricks at such short distances.

It was his choice to help the woman he cares for, because he will not see her hurt.

-R&R please!


	12. Patterns

Hey everybody! Glad to see everybody likes my work... makes me feel happy :). So!

Onwards! To my new reviewers, a shout-out! Annwyd, anonymous, King of Lemurs, Drake-Azathoth, Dragon's Ark, Kou Hokaro, Child of the Dark Wood, zomfg, and Nanali! Ah! I'm out of breath!

(Huff huff huff huff!)

Balthier's done, and I was gonna do Vaan next. However, Dragon's Ark, you got the dedication in first. Next character: Ashe!

(W00t for short pants!)

But before then, it's time for an Esper chapter. ;)

It's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 12

Patterns

I am perfect order.

Everything has a pattern. I see this from my place as order and understand it far too well. Clothing is made of cloth which is formed from wool which comes from sheep. All things are ordered, perfect, desirable.

Or not.

Some things do not fit within order. Oh, I understand chaos- what humans view as chaos- and I know that it has its place. Chaos, as humans would put it, is not in fact chaos. It is merely part of order humans do not understand. It is the flicker of fire, constantly changing, that many humans would think of as defining _chaos_. Or warfare, perhaps, which, while perhaps _active_, is not in fact chaotic. Humans confuse motion with chaos and stability with order.

These are false principles. In fact, the only thing truly chaotic about any of these things, are the thoughts of mortals _about_ them, not the things themselves.

But.

There are a few things that are, in fact, truly chaotic, things that have no place in my worldview or, in fact, in the world at all. They are things like men gaining redemption, or good men who live great lives who- for no reason whatsoever- kill. I... do not understand.

I've always watched men- all beings live lives based on order, after all- and sometimes, the acts of men confuse me. I understand most actions. They play out in simple ways. Men marry women who remind them of the good qualities of their mothers, because the good they saw in their mother is what they take to be good in a wife (rather they are correct or not, of course, depends on the mother herself, but that is neither here nor there.) People steal because they are hungry or lack any childhood training that teaches them that stealing is wrong. Women become girls of gil for the simple reason that they have nowhere left to turn, and maybe it is the only thing they have left- their bodies.

Simple, really.

But then... then... there are _some_ people, those I don't understand, the women who are prostitutes who say "No" one time to a client and turn their lives around for no reason that I can see and the men who, falling into darkness, grab a lifeline that wasn't even there a second ago and pull themselves up and out on a wing and a prayer. And humans call it redemption.

(_Balthier_)

(_Hate_)

Sometimes, there are men, born to the highest position, with lives of ease and good living before them, who throw it all away to kill their brothers and their father and make the world their plaything. But the only reason they could give is not the reason I find in their heart- they just _do_.

(_Vayne)_

(_Hate_)

And then there are those men- like the thrice-damned one who holds me now- who don't fit at all. He comes from a land that was destroyed. He has failed. Again and again, he has failed.

But never, once, in all his long and damned life

(_Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate!!!_)

Has this man ever given up trying to serve his king and country.

He doesn't have a noble father figure to live up to- Basch has become more than his father, who was nondescript by any account. His mother didn't leave him, or die horrendously at Imperial hands- she's still alive, actually, from what I can tell, eking out a living in an Imperial-controlled Landis. He has no reason, no reason, _no reason!_

_Basch!_

_I will hate you forever and always. You are... you are _nothing_, a nobody, a knight who failed king and country twice in a row. And yet..._

_And yet..._

_How do you hold on to honor?_

_The pattern is getting tangled, and I no longer understand the threads I once weaved. If a man like Basch can be a hero..._

_What room is left for order?_

-R&R please!


	13. Mage Princess

I've worked on this forever.

This was the first chapter that gave me trouble- I went with a lot of weird ideas (some of 'em out there, even for me) but then, I sit down, realize I should be writing on it, and lo and behold. I write this in thirty seconds.

Hope you like everybody! And shout-outs to new reviewers- too many to name, but all of you are awesome!

As a sidenote, it just occurred to me that this chapter's number might have something to do with it. First chapter I've had trouble writing, number 13… connection there, perhaps?

Anyway, let's go! It's…

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 13

Mage-Princess

When Ashe is wielding her staff, she knows only one thing: the Mist is thick around her like it never was before. When she is holding her staff, the Mist is hers.

(_And in ages past,_ her father used to say, _they were not called staves by the mages, but _foci_, places where the Mist gathers and we can hear the voices of gods_)

When she is holding her staff, she is Death, lady of reaping, come to this earth in a hail of fire and storm and cold. She can speak the words that rend the sky asunder; when she speaks, nature listens.

(Her hands give birth each day to fireballs, the children she and Rassler never got the chance to have.)

She was never a tomboy, wishing to play with her brothers' swords or wear their armor- too sick of their hundred and one little games to bother finding their steel or their training impressive. She was not a warrior-woman, repressed for her gender; sometimes she wonders if she should have been, given the circumstances.

(She remembers reading the history of warrior women, many rebels, and barely paying attention. She finds this ironic now.)

She was never meant to be this woman. She was supposed to be light, and airy, and beautiful.

(_I will teach you to dance, little princess_, her father used to say, laughing in his wonderful voice, _because princesses should know how to dance_.)

She is still that last, but that is only after her evening bath, because in the day she is usually too soaked in the gore and remnants of her dead foes to look beautiful and not scary.

(Many things explode when you strike them with lightning.)

Ashe was never supposed to know that a wizard who speaks too many incantations too quickly risks taking up burdens they cannot bear, and so each wizard every day scrupulously records every spell they use- through notches on their staves or beads on a chain or writings in a log. Ashe doesn't have that kind of time, so she bites her cheek instead. How much her mouth hurts can tell her when she has used enough and should rest or when she can still coax one more bolt of frost out of the Mist-soaked air.

(Of course, sometimes, when the Mist is dry, her cheek could be painless and there wouldn't be enough to work with. An artist cannot paint without a canvas.)

Ashe was never supposed to spend her nights reading spells by the poor light of campfire and candle so that she could inscribe ancient words into her head. Most scrolls are composed of a special papyrus, a tough material capable of taking the Mist-loaded words without burning, as common paper will; Ashe thinks it feels like leather, like rough-cut boots. When she speaks the words on the scroll, the Mist captures her intonations; if she succeeds at pronouncing them correctly ten times in a row, the Mist burns away, and the released magic inscribes the spell in memory, perfectly. If she fails once in those ten, the Mist stays where it is until she gets it right.

(Originally intended to prevent novices from using more powerful magics until they were ready, it has become a nuisance to Ashe when she wishes to learn a spell quickly and get to sleep.)

Ashe was never supposed to do many things.

But Ashe does _want_ to know that she can protect her people, be sword and shield to them where ordinary humans would fall- and so she bears this staff.

An ordinary princess would have died. Ashe has done more than merely live; she has thrived, leader of a rebellion that even the Empire cannot crush.

She wasn't supposed to be this. Or to hold this weapon, this lovely rod, so close to her chest.

But it's what she must be, because the only thing that can save her people now is a warrior-princess.

And Ashelia, the last person who'd ever dreamed she would stand here, can be that- if she holds a rod to her chest and speaks the words.

It was always her choice.

-R&R please!


	14. Glittering Things

Wow, been a while, huh? Ashe is hard for me to get into. Still, this is a piece for a friend- a shout-out to Tiger5913, my best friend all these long years on a wonderful girl, and an excellent author! Go check her out.

On the other hand, now that the obligatory plug is over, here it is: Ashe with sword and shield!

Chapter 14

Glittering Things

Ashe is the saddest of them all.

Oh, she's not sad over the big things, the death of her father and the enslavement of her people; she is royalty, and she was trained to live in her life in these grand moments, the eternal, slow dance of stars watched by all people.

(Her father told her that she would live her life in the sun. She did not know what he meant until she saw the effect the announcement of her suicide had on her people, the slow death of her people's hope. To this day, she believes she could have started a successful rebellion if she had declared her existence that day.)

It's little things, stupid things, that sadden Ashe; the shape of her body, which is lean, and hungry, the body of a hunter and nothing pretty in iron curves that look more like a smaller Basch than anything else; the near non-existence of her breasts, driven from their budding development at her tender age of sixteen by the constant binding she undertook to make them fit under armor and cloth, to fit under lifesaving metal, which stunted them in their prime.

(She remembers once, when they all got drunk- hey, they'd just shut down the Empire's biggest laboratory for a while and found out where the last piece of all puzzles fit, at the Lighthouse, with the Occuria, so why not party a little before the ending?- and hearing Penelo, drunk with Vaan as always, grab Vaan's bare chest and declare "Bigger!" before nearly dying in a laughing fit. Vaan, who had this bizarre snorting laugh while drunk that was nothing short of ridiculously funny, also pretty much gave up breathing, merely laying next to Penelo laughing in her blond, golden curls. Ashe, whom they'd both been looking at earlier, just sulked in her drink. She knew they were half right, and she was a moody drunk anyway- she might kill them if she didn't watch it.)

It's the pigeon-toe she's fought so hard against her whole life- the little inturning of feet that was cute when she was thirteen and could be the end of her now, when she must run, and _run_ sometimes, and the little inturning that she cannot quite help slows her way down. She cannot afford the sacrifice of having in-turned feet. Straight feet run faster.

(She was also born nearly flat-footed. She has spent the last two years in aching exercises of bending and unbending her toes, and with terrible iron contraptions in her shoes that bind them and pull them upward, just coming close enough to breaking the bones in her feet to force them to adapt. She has an arch, now, and arched feet run faster, and so much of her life has been dictated by what she must do, not what she can.)

It's the little things that make her cry, like the way she can't have her hair the way she wants it, forcing it into a helmet shape because, after all, what's she going to be wearing soon? She has to wear armor; no one else will. Fran wears no armor, which Ashe supposes is distraction enough against human foes, and makes some (small) sense for the bow she prefers to wield.

Balthier wears only a light leather vest and leather greaves, all under his flashy, bright clothing. He likes to have his hair in the wind, laughing and shining.

(Ashe privately thinks him an arrogant asshole, but a man who lived to be Judge and then survived to leave them is not one whose methods ought to be questioned.)

Vaan is too slight for heavy armor to help him much, shoulders actually smaller than Ashe's, and he fights with a spear anyway; he needs the room to maneuver and the heaviest armor in the world wouldn't save a spearman from a closed-in foe, so he needs to _move_ when things happen.

(Besides- and this is the one small sin Ashe allows herself, with no shame- she likes the way he looks with only a light leather vest, chest and arms still flashing, all young and peppy, vibrant as she will never be again. She's older than him and most definitely feels it... but the thought of a dalliance still lingers when she sees his tanned skin flying in the sun, or hears one of his variety of idiot battle cries that somehow make her _smile_, even in the worst situations.)

Penelo is more valuable near-naked and flat-out _running_, bolting with speed, backstabbing their opponents and ambushing them in broad daylight. The little dagger-wielder is agile and needs to remain so.

(Penelo may be the only competition Ashe would ever have for Vaan's heart, but Penelo would never stand in her way- the girl's too happy. She wouldn't risk her happiness for a pointless battle for someone's heart, since that someone has a choice anyway.)

(Besides- though Ashe doesn't know this- Vaan and Penelo stole each other's virginity already, about six months ago, so it's not like it's a ride Penelo hasn't ridden before.)

So it's up to her and Basch to give their crew of missile shooters and speed demons some kind of defense. Basch looks great suited in full armor, a head above all the rest of them; he seems mighty, somehow, with his greatsword and- improbably- the shield he uses at the same time in his arms while he stands, solemn and slow, a mighty metal giant.

He's a hero. You can tell that by looking at him.

Ashe looks ridiculous, a little girl playing dress-up, the helmet's always just a little too big for her slight head and the armor made for those with much bigger shoulders than she has. Her gauntlets are always slick with sweat, since she's always grasping the leather or- in the better models- velvet insides to keep them from falling right off her slender hands. She hates wearing armor, but she- as always- must. It is the refrain she repeats to herself as she does things she would never have considered doing.

(She killed a man, once, rich storekeeper who had managed to keep his store despite the Imperial invasion, Ashelia's suicide, and his own race- the man was a Seeq, huge, fat, and blue- and he'd been so given to _laughing_... look at his great good luck! God was with him.)

(He was so happy.)

(Ashelia killed him for food. For the money he carried. The rebels had few purses supporting them in those days.)

(It is the one sin that haunts her.)

So, in a way, weaponry is a relief to her. It is natural to her, thank the Father above who will damn her some day for the things she has done; she can do things with weapons, amazing, surprising, steel twinkling off her fingers like it was born there.

She cried, the first day she found this out. In all the horror, all the hate, here was something that was the spark in the darkness. She had found her light.

(Father above will destroy her for other sins, but let Him hear this one last prayer: thank You for this gift. Thank You for this despite all.)

(She has a weird form of religion, based mostly on her utter, complete conviction she is damned. The Seeq she killed was not her only sin, though the worst, but Ashelia B'Nargan Dalmasca has never had any forgiveness in her, for other people, for herself. Her idea that she is damned is so utter and complete that it took a great deal of courage for her to enter the Kiltia's temple- she was afraid she would be burned at the entrance.)

(...She has never understood the Kiltia's teachings of forgiveness very well.)

So when she had them, her little quicksilver knives, the first weapons she had been offered by the rebel weaponsmaster (such a grand title for a man whose storehouse contained more rusted weapons than usable ones), she told him, no, as she danced them across her fingers.

(Oh, Father, the way they glinted in the light- like stars, like fire, like suns in her little hands- told her that this was what she could do, not what she must do. This was her talent.)

She wanted a sword.

He told her no. He had only enough swords to keep Vossler, who had this habit of breaking them with his incredible strength, in arms and who was she to ask for a sword? She was a stupid little girl they'd brought with them because Vossler kept attacking anyone who said different. Everyone figured she was his niece or some other relative. She'd have to make do with a clumsier weapon, or a cheaper one- like the knives.

She'd held the knives to his throat and, subtly but very quickly, slit his shirt right off his back without marking his skin. If she had thought about it, she would have cut him, but just letting her hands do their work made it possible.

He'd stared at her, eyes huge. After, the tale went about that Vossler had found a war goddess of some ancient pagan religion to fight on their side and _that_ was why he'd brought the slip of a girl with him to the rebellion.

Ashe never bothered correcting them, mostly because it kept her in swords for as long as she wanted them.

She hasn't stopped yet.

Swords are Ashe's way of living- all weapons are her way of living- because they are what she _can_ do. Shields are what she must do. Armor is what she must do. Her looks, her body, her very actions, they are what she _must_ do.

But the Father gave her this one thing, and so she will be glad. She is a master of weapons, of swords; and their shining glint, as they cut down the darkness, is the one thing keeping back depression in Ashe's mind.

It was always her choice.

-R&R! Next chap: Famfrit, the Esper of Water, Waves, and Giant Pots!

...With Chains!


	15. Scholarly

Hey people! I'm back, quickly this time, too! It's another Esper chapter that you guys love so much! This time it's...

Drumroll please!...

Famfrit, the Esper of Water! Another personal favorite of mine, I hope you guys like it! It's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter Fifteen

Scholarly

I know what I am- hideous, ugly, horrible. I, Famfrit, am so foul that the gods themselves gave me this armor, placed bonds on me, so that they would never have to look on my form. However, I am also a scholar. I like to read, to learn, though that was not what I was given a talent for. Like all the dark ones who were created to serve as the antonym of the bearers of Light- to serve as the version of their good in the realm of darkness- I have been given many great gifts, such as the chain I wield, but learning and scholarly work was not one of them.

(It is not the urn itself that has the power. In fact, the urn does not really exist. My chain, you see, is hooked into my armor, and can draw on its power. Just as my armor fully conceals, so can my chain conceal. My powers are not my own- I stole them from a great sea-beast who called himself Leviathan. That creature itself is bound into what, to mortals, resembles a great urn.)

If it had been perhaps I would not have been like all those dark others- except for one, the darkness itself, which is irony itself defined- who said "_Yes_" when they should have said "_No_", Ultima standing before us as the floating, demonic castle-thing she had become, and while not as foul as many of them- Mateus comes to mind, and Zeromus, Exdeath- I did my share of evil deeds.

(Me and the warriors under my command were chosen to assault the Demesne of Water. None of the four prime elements are usually very strong, often outclassed by light, darkness, lightning, ice, and the other elements that make up the physical world in varying degrees; this was often reflected in the demesnes, where it took little to win, like Air, which we took in exactly two days and ten minutes.)

(Water took us all by surprise and fought with the tenacity of a cornered rat. It was the hardest fight we had until the fight we lost, and binding their leader into my chains was our greatest triumph.)

But we failed, as is so often told, by the garif, that good people who sit in the borderlands of Dalmasca and who even the Empire does not want to bother. We found the door to Heaven and were beaten back at its gates.

(Do I remember it? No... all I recall is a laughing man with a blonde ponytail and fists harder than iron and another laughing man with a blonde ponytail who could have been his twin and wielded some strange, saw-edged weapon that whirred and whined with chains of blades.)

(There was also pain. I distinctly remember that.)

Judgement, cast off, loss, falling to the planet like a broken star. Except I'd never been one who'd went with them out of mere greed, mere bloodlust- I went with them out of grief, of loneliness, of sorrow at my horrible form.

So the gods gave me mercy. I have never been bound in a seal. A mercy, they said, because of all Espers I alone had never really tried for evil, stretched towards it with hands unbroken. I had done evil, yes, but out of grief, misery, rage. So they let me have my original form, my original power, and no seal.

They have forgiveness- some- for beings like me. The creature I had bound was a danger not just to the Espers in the war for domination, but to human life as well, for Leviathan was an angry spirit who enjoyed crushing cities in waves, and in binding him I had inadvertently done great good. So they forgave, sent me to the mortal world with a clean slate and eternity.

I have spent it being a scholar. Reading, writing (under various pseudonyms, my favorite being _Bismark Morgansthrope the Third_, which sounds properly foppish for an Archadian scholar) and learning have been most of what I do to pass the time, mostly in human form, since I doubt most librarians would allow giant armored spirit beings to enter their libraries to browse through the books.

But reading does grow old, sometimes, so I, like other Espers, sometimes hold contracts with summoners, since it is often entertaining, often enlightening, and always leads to some bizarre experience to write about later. Unlike the others, I am not, however, dependent upon summoners for a physical form, for a conjuring to fuel my physical existence. I am free to live without it.

It was in such a free state, my last summoner having died at the tender age of eighty-five some thirty years beforehand, bored with my scholar work and haunting a shipwreck that I had taken a liking to in hopes some adventurer would come seek me out, that I met Cidolphus Bunansa.

-

I thought his name was ridiculous, at first; Cidolphus? I am a learned being, as I said, and knew where the name came from. He was named after a sub-species of dolphin that haunted the world's waters at deep depths, the Cidolphus Long-nose, it can be found in Clive Winslett's _Of Creatures I Have Known_, page forty-two, right after the section on metallic dragons. The point being, I found his name a source of great amusement for a long time.

(I later learned he had, instead, been named for a long line of famous men, Cid at first and later Cidolphus, that were his ancestors and his antecendants. I'd read much about the earlier ones but never made the connection to Cidolphus from Cid. One of the later members of this storied family had discovered the deep-diving dolphins. I still preferred to pretend that he was named after a long-nosed and particularly ugly beast and often chuckled at him for no real reason he ever knew.)

He had come to me to make a contract- like most mortals- and so I told him my terms. He found them absurd, as they required that I be allowed to do what I wished, rather than being kept in the summoning dark, when he did not need me in battle. I remember the look on his eyes, glasses wet from the thunderstorm that constantly whipped around this cape and was the death of the shipwreck we stood in, angry and fierce and as determined as any Hume I have ever seen.

I rather admired that. Living life ugly has also made me tough- I admire it in mortals, particularly men of such scholarly bent as this man obviously was, the guns strapped to his waist a sign that he was a poor fighter and relied on tech to give him an edge in battle rather than skill. Most scholars are weak, wishy-washy fellows who agree with whoever in the room has the strongest personality; strength in a scholar was admirable.

Growing angry, he immediately attempted- and failed- to trap me with the seal with which I am recorded in books detailing the Espers (it's actually my name written in an old tongue and not a binding spell, as of all Espers only I and Zodiark do not have binding spells placed upon us). Upon doing this, he realized that the being he was standing in front of was more powerful than him, in an area where its own natural powers were greatly increased, knew he had just tried to entrap it, and was probably angry at him.

So he did the one thing he could think of to save his life. He looked me square in the eye (or visor) and asked, quite calmly, for forgiveness.

That courage in the face of annihilation was... heartening. I do not do evil acts for the sheer joy of them, am not Exdeath in a joy at destruction, and would not have killed him for his impertinence- better men than him have tried the same trick and failed. At most, I would have given him a shoo off and sent him on his way.

It was also very intelligent, no trick of the simple-minded, which impressed me as well. Being a scholar for longer than most men have been alive gives me a very high opinion of intelligence.

He listened to someone I could _almost_ see- a wave in the air, a ghost of an illusion- and said yes. Having not, until this moment, realized we were not alone, I asked if the contract was with him or the Occuria over his shoulder.

I shocked Venat enough that she appeared in physical form for an instant before vanishing away. I knew the Occuria; once called Elves, they'd turned themselves into some kind of false demi-god race that a few foolish mortals worshiped out of blindness and stupidity. To see one of them, all these years after the Kiltia had finally wiped out the last of their fanatics (I'd been there, summoned by the current head of the Kiltia to aid in the battle), was a surprise. I'd hoped they were all dead.

" Venat?" I said, since the Occuria, who'd wiped out their own race to fuel the change into their energy-forms, were few in number and instantly recognizable if you'd met them once. We'd fought at that battle I mentioned and I still remembered how weak she was- no Leviathan her, merely a user of the Stones she and the Occuria had placed so much of their dead people's power in and a poor one at that.

Nethicite is awe-inspiring to mortals, because all the power they use is derived from Mist and Nethicite plays havoc with Mist powers, feeds on them, destroys them. All bound Espers, too, rely on it, since the Mist is the only magic native to this world that their summoners can draw on, and so they fear Nethicite as much as mortals do.

I and Zodiark are under no such rules. We rely on magic from entirely different planes to fuel our abilities. Henceforth, Nethicite is more of an annoyance than a real hazard to me or to him, and we saw a great deal of battle in the early days when the Kiltia was just a small movement led by a Bangaa trying to stop the Occuria's evil and the Occuria were controlling a pretty sizable empire.

(I do not want to tell my new summoner this, but his leader, Ashelia- her very country is born from that time and the Occuria's evil, though I am quite proud of Raithwall for turning it around on them. You see, Raithwall was supposed to have used the Occuria's Stones to wipe out everyone on the planet other than his people, establishing a perfect dominion and a new religion in the name of the Occuria. He could have done it, too, since the Occuria gave him more than three stones- he had ten, in fact, and enough power in those ten stones to make even Zodiark pause.)

(He and Belias burned all but three of them in hellfire, so hot even Nethicite melted, then chucked the remains into the ocean in a box made of lead. Belias, who had secretly contacted me, asked me to make sure they reached the deepest pit in the oceans, a place where the pressure would finish the job. I did one better. I dropped them into a sea-floor volcano.)

She was surprised that I remembered her, but her face was different than I'd seen before- sadder, somehow, lines dropped as if she'd come to realize the gravity of her sins. I assumed old age had merely taken its toll; a sorrowful Occuria would be like Ultima becoming a Kiltia.

---

When she told me her story, about how it had to stop, the death _had_ to stop, and her plan to destroy the Sun-Cyst itself, I almost fainted. It's not biologically possible for me to faint- I don't have a biology, actually- but the want was there.

This was not what I'd expected. " So," I asked, " how are you to do this? Why do you need me?"

To break the Occuria, permanently, would be a great deed. They may even allow my penance to finish and my time in this mortal world to end if I could be a part of it.

This was before I knew of all the evil Venat committed in pursuit of this goal. As one who has done worse, I was still shocked and horrified at what she had committed, the weapon she had chosen- the long-haired, arrogant bastard whose name, Vayne, was more fitting than anyone could have known. A man who spent as much time as he obviously had on his hair was not a man who should have been running a kingdom.

But as I said, I did not know at the time, and she was meeting me before they entered the Lighthouse- she was unconfident of Cid's chances at surviving the terrors inside without my help, and she...

She really wanted Cid to live. It did not work out that way, as history has shown, but Cid had been her tool and her servant for so long she had grown to love him. Not love, in the full-blown, fairies and roses sense of the word- no member of the Occuria, who had sacrificed an entire people to make themselves false gods, was really capable of love, I believe. No, it was the love of friend to friend, of comrades in arms and men involved in the same work, and she wanted Cid to live past the battles she was committed to. Vayne she wanted to die- Vayne had to die, if her act of penance was to be complete. As sacrifice to cover all the sins she had committed along the way to destroying the Occuria, she was going to die, and take Vayne with her, but Cid- who had come to her in grief, had come to her when he'd thought everything was lost and she'd shown up to tell him secrets of stones- was someone she thought deserved to survive.

I tried. I really did. I liked Cid; he was scholar as much as I was, and our conversation as we climbed the tower (which wasn't that hard, really; Hashmal was guarding it, but a quick check that showed him my powers were far beyond his convinced him to stay away) was fun, full of odd trivia, bits of notes. We learned from each other, though it didn't do Cid much good since he died at the top.

I failed her in keeping him alive, but I hardly believe it was my fault. Cid wanted to die. He'd seen the evil the Empire had done, as well, and while he'd hardly participated in most of it, he had let it happen, and that was enough for him to hate himself enough to want death. And I, of all beings, am not one who can judge the merits of other's choices.

But my own choices are free, and Cid's son was there, too- a fellow I had spent much of the battle beating on, as he seemed the most determined to wipe his father off the earth. When his father died, there were tears there- and I did something I thought I would never do. I offered myself to Balthier, to do with as he willed. I made a contract with a Hume, rather than the other way around.

He accepted. Having been smashed around by more than one swing of my urn, with only a magic shield to protect him from being crushed against a wall and a large piece of blue crockery since his armor would have buckled like tin, he knew how powerful I was.

Why did I do it? Simple.

I am a scholar. And I wanted to learn why a man, a seemingly good man, would want to kill his own father.

The learning took many years.

---

_Famfrit never stopped learning, from Balthier, from other good men. He stood with many heroes in his time, including a descendant of Balthier and Fran's named Cidolphus, who never quite understood why the word "dolphin" made the Esper go into gales of deep, boundless laughter._

_Famfrit became a hero; and he got what he wanted, a path back into Heaven, back into what he was meant to do. But the most interesting thing?_

_When he returned, he became known as the patron Esper of scholars, pirates- and dolphins._

-R&R!


	16. Guts, Bravado

Hey people! I took a minor break from it to attend to the start of college, but now that me (and my little sister!) are settled, I'm set to get back.

And now we find ourselves at the crux! We are now going to star... Vaan! Vaan is a unique character, if only because A.) He is completely not the main character, despite being the protagonist, and B.) His voice is so utterly, completely not what you'd expect from him. Several of my female friends have swooned over the voice, saying it's a "bedroom voice", and though I don't know how true that is, I do find it amusing that Vaan has a much deeper voice than the taller, considerably broader Basch. Boy's got some lungs on him!

(Funny note: one friend said he had a "take your clothes off" voice. Must learn to impersonate Vaan.)

Anyway, we'll be doing this first one with the weapon type I chose for him- a spear. My Vaan has the dual roles of asskicking and healing; he rotates between using white magic when we need it in boss fights to using his spear to wreck some havoc on random enemies. A lot of my characters do this- Balthier switches between using support magic for random encounters to directing black magic at boss targets, for example, since I need the damage more than I need the buffs.

Basch, on the other hand, does the same job every time- Decoy + Brick Wall Defense. Gotta love the well-roundedness of a fighter. :)

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. Shouts outs to all my new reviewers, especially Vixen2004, who is awesome and is the first person to comment on these little prologues. Give me a shout-out, friend, and the next piece is yours! And remember: Cid couldn't run away like Beatrix because he had an actual personality. Bum-ba-ba-dish!

...How _do_ you do the comedy drum roll, anyway? How is that spelled? Drum-bang-cymbal clash? What?

Anyway, it's- and do remember this is not the title :) (I lol'd when I read that... I'd never even considered it that way:)...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 16

Guts, Bravado

It is one thing, to be a teenager, and feel like you are going to live forever.

It is another thing, to be a member of a captured city, and realize, no, you will live only if the guards do not demand your death.

These are the circumstances of Vaan's life.

Vaan is a happy man. He lives freely, happily, optimistically. But this must match itself with the circumstances of his life- standing in his taken city, watching the guards take and take and take, hearing how the worst of the Empire always gets sent to Rabanastre because, hey, it's not like they mount a resistance worth talking about.

(Now, Landis, _that_ land can mount a resistance. To this day, the Empire has trouble maintaining control of the region, because, since the fall of the Knights, the Geomancers that once congregated there have taken over the rebellion, and it is surprisingly hard to argue with people who can drop mountains on you.)

So, really, Vaan has to adapt himself to his circumstances. He refuses to fall to drinking, like so many of his people have, moping about and speaking of ancient glories like they were still real. He refuses to blow his mind with the herbs of far-off places (or near ones- the nearby Cactuar can be boiled to produce an exceptionally powerful hallucinogenic), and sit around giggling like a madman.

No, Vaan refuses that path- refuses it without even thinking about it- because in his happiness is also his inner self, a core that is something like stubbornness and like hope but is really a bit of both, what learned wise men would call bravado and unlearned wise men would call guts.

So Vaan has become the greatest and bravest of Rabanastre's thieves- one of the few daring men who makes raids on the Imperial guardsmen daily, to take back what they steal from the people of the city of sand. Vaan's guts, his sheer bravado, have allowed him to carry away what most men would never accomplish- his will is such that, when he thinks of a plan, his concern is not rather he will do it or whether he might die from it, but only if he _can_ do it.

(This has led to some rather odd stories in Rabanastre. One guardsman, who was a particular bastard to the people because he came from a heavily-shaded forest area and absolutely hated the heat, was robbed when Vaan leapt off a nearby rooftop and stole the guard's helmet, which he'd laid on the rail of the open-air bridge he was walking on so he could wipe his forehead. All the guard saw was a blur and a man flying past him, arms spread wide and laughing, with his helmet clutched in his hand. When the guard had ran over and looked over the side, to the bottom of Rabanastre far below, he saw nothing beneath him but air- not the faintest movement could be seen.)

(This episode led him to a religious conversion that made him a well-loved priest amongst the Kiltia, who often preached of the day a spirit had flown past him and taken his helmet, and in so doing had shown him that he could not live life faceless and angry, like he had in Rabanastre. He died old, beloved, and happy.)

(Vaan himself, who had simply grabbed a hanging canvas to save himself, had swung under the man's bridge with his prize, which was why the man never saw him. He was very proud of his raid.)

This thievery has also made Vaan, ironically, honest- in a city full of people who lie every day, who smile as they pay taxes to the Arcadians and curse them behind their backs, Vaan is one of the few who says his meaning in the midst of all this; lying is something that would never occur to the young Hume. He's too brave, to not be honest; honesty is a form of bravery and Vaan carries that last in his soul so deep it is his very core. He's honest to the point where he once shouted at the old man who runs Lowcity, claiming that someone as fried as he was on malboro-smoke and joker weed was unfit to try to help anyone, much less the whole city.

(This had sent the old man into such a fit of coughing laughter that he'd nearly died. His great fondness for Vaan- who he had personally surnamed "Ratsbane"- grew at that moment, since he liked the boy who knew that old Dal was surrounded by more armed guards than a Bangaa could shake a stick at but didn't care to tell the truth anyway. Dal informed the boy that he was dying anyway, victim of a crippling disease of bones and flesh that his people called crack joint but the Empire named rheumatoid arthritis, and he was so damn near dying anyway that he was always wracked with terrible pain. It was only the smoke of his drugs that kept him sane.)

(Vaan forgave him and the two have been friends ever since.)

Vaan is gutsy- made that way by Rabanastre and the occupation- and honest- made that way by his courage- and so when the time came for the journey to _really_ begin, for the hunt to track down a way to kill the Empire truly started, he chose a weapon for himself, to replace his rusted old blade.

He chose the spear.

Spears are a fighter's weapon- a killing weapon- something designed since the dawn of time to kill, the hunter's first choice. Vaan _likes_ that about this weapon, that it's so bare, so honest, in its purpose, its form.

He's never seen or even _heard_ of a nobleman wielding a spear. It's a commoner's weapon, something a poor soldier might use, while a nobleman must wield a sword, or some other fancy weapon that can dress itself up in fancy designs and pretend to be something other than what it really is. Vaan despises swords, even though he was forced to wield one (the Empire guards its armories very well), because of that lie in them.

Axes, too, bother him; something about a tool originally designed to fell trees, designed for those who wore workman's clothes and not the armor of the soldier, doesn't sit well with Vaan, doesn't sit well with a man to whom honesty and courage are second nature. It seems wrong, somehow, to force a tool that is not a weapon to turn itself to the work of ending other's lives.

Spears are honest. They are brave- _weapons_, above everything, Vaan loves something that is so honest to itself, something so brave and noble and pure that what it is becomes the _only_ thing it is. Like Vaan himself, who never once pretended he wasn't a thief.

(He'd even told a few Guards that once, when they were harassing a youngster for being a pickpocket despite the boy's protests of innocence. The Guards had chased Vaan, who, through a series of events involving a stumbling Bangaa, a sleeping Moogle, three scared Chocobos and one handful of sand, had given them the slip. The little boy gave him half the earnings from his thievery as a present for saving his hide.)

Vaan is something different from all his companions, for while all of them have some mighty, admirable trait, none of them are quite like him- an ordinary man, a _common_ man, who has no place in this world of nobles and empires and quests and kings, who is surviving nonetheless because it is his will and he will not stop. It is the reason Shemhazai, hundreds of thousands of years after Vaan's bones are ground to dust and his soul gone on to perfect existence, remembers his name, and the sound of a man laughing as he fought the darkness and did not care. He is the reason she will remain, in the hall she once ruled, and turn the Demesne of Shadow into a world worth living in again.

He is the triumph of good over evil, of what is most basic in humanity against all odds. He is no tortured princess, broken by the loss of her kingdom, no knight sworn to defend a dead country, no sky pirate running from his past as a judge. He is just a normal man, an ordinary thief.

It is his will that sets him apart. So next to him will ride the weapon that is like him, the tool that, even though it is basic and the first of all weapons, so primitive that even when made with the newest materials it is simple, is the deadliest of all weapons known to modern man.

It is the spear that he will take with him into battle, since it is just like him.

It was always his choice.

-R&R please!


	17. Vengeance

Hey everyone! I'm back with Vaan part 2. I can't believe I've actually made it this far; I figured I'd lose interest about halfway through. The advantage of doing a collection of one-shots, though, is that you never really can lose interest! Like with this little jaunt, which I'm doing as a shout-out to a personal (real life, surprisingly!) friend of mine, who asked for a Vaan-and-mace feature. I never used maces in the game, which led to the irony of trying to figure out just what the hell they _do_.

(At first, I thought maces were just higher-level hammers. Dumb me!)

So, here's Vaan- Maces- and… a personality change :P. It's…

" SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 17

Vengeance

You'd be surprised how much a poor person can lose.

Poor people are thought of as having little- that's kind of the definition of being poor- but that's only the way people think who _aren't_ poor. Poor people have a _lot_ to lose; the very most of any group, really, because it is all they have, the little bit of gil they keep hidden under the bed the whole sum and total of their fortunes. Poor people lose the most in these games of empires, these dances of thrones; even Ashelia has not lost as much as Vaan. At the very least, she has kept more sets of clothes than Vaan has seen in a long while.

(He wears the vest for a simple reason: it is one of two pairs of upper clothing he actually has.)

And there is something else; Ashelia can still gain something out of her loss. Ashelia can- and often does- think of the day she can reclaim her throne; the ghosts of her dead husband and her father and all her brothers will remain at her side, but at the very least she can tell them _I have not failed you_, and this will put her ghosts to rest. She can live with the knowledge that she has done what she could for her dead.

Vaan? Vaan has nothing; not even the ability to lay to rest the memory of a man whose last moments were a lie. Carefully constructed by the long-haired bastard known as Vayne to strip Dalmasca of everything, the worst trick Vaan has ever heard of- to make a man destroy his own country- those last moments will always be between Vaan and his brother. He will simply always think of him and wonder _Why did you have to die destroying the country you loved?_

In this way, he is much like the mad in Rabanastre (all of whom were poor before; the nobility and merchants did not, generally, go mad, but the poor were broken by this final injustice). Each spent every day reminiscing, thinking of their lost ones; their dead. And for Vaan, whose dead died destroying his country, there would have been little blame had he ended up as mad as the worst in Lowcity.

But Vaan is different in one way, and this way keeps him from being caught up in his own madness.

Vaan is looking for revenge.

(He has thought this thought for years. It still comforts him.)

The day he met Ashelia? The day he met the woman- and the resistance- who might, somehow, have a chance at destroying the Empire?

He thought "Yes", and he ran to them, ran at the chance- not to save the world, but to destroy the current rulers of it. It is why he stuck with them, when Balthier and Fran and even Vossler were curious as to what this young Hume who really had no place with them was doing, and why he was so very determined to rescue the princess.

(Vaan thought of it as his initiation rite into the rebellion. He was right.)

So now that he's with a group he can work with, one with the same damn goal, he's going to put into motion the plan that will make him powerful.

He will become a mage.

Vaan knows that the world is changing; that the true power is getting poured into the hands of the gunmen, and the mages, of the ones who can destroy men with a pull of their fingers or the whispers of their words. Swords, hammers, and bows are becoming obsolete as new weaponry takes the field.

Guns never held much appeal for Vaan; for one thing, he's a terrible shot, but more importantly, it is so _slow_ to killsomeone with a gun, so hard to kill a large group with bullets. Magic is much more efficient.

Magic is _powerful_. Lightning, running hot through his hands, is power; so is ice, and fire, the element he seems closet to.

(When the Mist is thick, he can make it explode like a miniature sun in his hand. Even he is not quite for sure why, except maybe his willpower, his sheer _determination_, have made him this strong.)

He likes that power.

But this path is going to involve a lot of death- a lot of fighting- and Vaan cannot be content with rod and robe, like most mages. He prefers the surety of protection, because while many weapons are quickly becoming obsolete, an out-of-date weapon can kill you just as surely as a freshly-made one. Vaan needs at least a little protection, and that means shield.

But whenever a mage ties up their hands with anything, they have to then balance it with a focus, with something that will allow them to cast spells despite not being able to make all the correct motions. For most mages, this means staves, which can channel power easily. But for Vaan, the only real option is the mace.

Maces are weird weapons, in many ways. Hammering, powerful physical weapons, they were nevertheless designed for those who used spells; even shakes when in the presence of magic- the many cuts and grooves on the head creating pathways that the magic can travel down. It is not as _magical_ as a rod or staff, but it can often work better for men like Vaan, who- despite his choosing of the mystic's path- is still a physically strong man, who can wield a shield well and chooses to do so.

It wasn't exactly his choice. His real choice was magic.

But the mace followed after that.

And perhaps the real choice wasn't even magic. It was revenge over madness or tears, and _everything_ follows after that.

-R&R please.


	18. Death Cry

Hey everybody! Silverlocke980 here, with the first optional Esper: Zalera! Kinda don't like him, but meh.

(My reasoning for all videogame characters: Can I see this character on my TV with my mom in the room? I don't believe in fanservice.)

(…This makes things _reaaal_ awkward when I try to have Fran in my party.)

Big shout-out to all my reviewers, new and old. You guys make writing fun. I've not been doing individual shout-outs because there are too many people and I'm scared I'll miss someone

(since that'll make me feel like a real ass)

but one reviewer does deserve a great plug, since she wrote a story inspired by! mine! Akanthae-hime, thank you for making me feel absolutely grand. Go read her fic, everyone- it's called "And It Must Flourish". Excellent Vaan-centric piece, and it mentions Gil Toss, so it's not like you can really ignore it.

(P.S. Your Vaan and Guns request is approved- next Vaan chapter, fun with bullets!)

Anyhoo, with the obligatories and formalities observed, this is the meat of the thing. Since this is the first of the "optional" fellows, I've decided to do them "in order"- the ones you can get first and most easily in the game. While I'm sure everyone will point out where I've made a mistake and put one Esper ahead of another in chronological order, please be gentle; I'm not great with the numbers and timing thing, so I'm sure I'll get at least one wrong.

The exceptions are Ultima and Zodiark- they will be the last two Esper chapters.

So! On to Zalera! Who keeps making me think that, man, a woman attached to you at all times might come in handy every now and then.

(You could, after all, technically claim yourself to be the _ultimate _minority, since, you know, you're _both_, all at once.)

(Alongside the more obvious uses.)

Enough of highly disturbing details! It's…

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter Eighteen

Death Cry

It is… not so intolerable, to be eternally damned when one has a companion.

Most of we Espers are doomed to mostly eternal solitude- enforced isolation- because the gods fear our return to power. If we united again, why, we might even be able to accomplish what we had set out to do, finish our attack on forever.

(I do not wish to be beaten back at the gates again, not by any of the heroes we fought and were vanquished by. All I recall is a laughing man who looked somewhat like a dog and a crossbow that shattered my skull with one shot.)

To counter the possibility of our retrying the ancient battle, the gods have bound us to many different places, to many different cultures, and even to many different times- making the chance of all twelve of us being active and controlled by a group of likeminded people at the same time incredibly slim.

(I find it ironic- in a bitter, angry sort of way- that the one group who _has_ managed to accomplish this feat is heroic. Where are the villains when you need them? The closest they have is Balthier, and in his soul burns with the virtue of freedom so bright it would burn me to touch it.)

I did not start my eternity in solitude, though, like all the others- except perhaps Mateus, but I believe the gods would have noticed he had an ice goddess imprisoned before sending him to the mortal worlds.

I had her.

She is close to me even now, and in the eternal darkness that is the place we go when we are not being summoned, we hold each other tight.

-

I have known her for centuries; for this reason, it is surprisingly hard to detail her in my mind, to hold a concept of her in my head, for she has been of me and part of me for so long that I sometimes forget the details. Asking a tree what the forest is will net you no answer but the impression of vastness and growing things and eternal happenings. The forest _is_.

Such is my relationship with her.

My shamaness- and she thinks of me as her Esper, sometimes, though not often- is special, unique, in many ways. She is a human, with all that entails, a soul and a will to do more, do better; she is more than human, bound to the arm of an Esper and damn near a god because of it. She is blind, was blind at birth, centuries ago; she has still managed to witness events beyond the mortal mind. She is a bundle of contradictions, my shamaness, and I find it amusing to pass the centuries considering them.

I remember that we met because she wanted the Grim Reaper, Death itself, to talk.

-

Ancient, ageless centuries ago- when the scions of darkness did the work they were supposed to do (with the obvious exceptions of Mateus and Shemhazai)- men lived in simple lives. Though technology was a constant and much greater than what mortals possess in these times, it was background to ancient traditions- the powers of science, and all the evil that it could be, were kept in check by a firm belief in the power of people and the will of the gods. This seemed an unlikely place to look for warnings of the future war, but it was here that I- the first Esper to conceive of the gods' destruction, even before the fall of Ultima triggered our ascendance- began to ponder and plan.

She was a shamaness back then, and is so now- a woman dedicated to the Earth, and growing things. She was the one who called the earth and did the dances and served the people. She was their spiritual guide.

She was troubled.

She wondered- why is the world the way it is? Why do so many people hate the gods? Why, in all the blood and murder and chaos that was good men and women fighting those who were evil, did some stand to the side and ridicule their efforts? They fought and died in their defense. How could they say these things, do these things?

I had been pondering the same thing. The task of delivering souls to ultimate judgement has the ironic side-effect of turning one into a sort of spiritual bartender- always listening to the self-righteous wailing of souls going to well-deserved, eternal torment, and the job only got worse because Ultima eventually picked up the job of taking souls from me after their initial release and taking them to heaven, leaving me stuck with the refuse that needed to be delivered to Zeromus for punishment. I can still hear their cries.

(_But the child was acting provocative, it was her fault I did it/ and that son of a bitch _deserved _to die, he was such a little shit/ women wearing clothes like that deserve to be raped, I did nothing wrong._)

So my shamaness- who did not know that I was curious about these things myself, but believed that as the spirit of Death I met with all men at some point- called me up in a sacred circle. I am a terrifying figure- as all we dark scions are, the gods intending it to show the world that even what is ugly, and terrifying, can be good too

(The irony bites, sometimes, considering what we did later)

But this lone shamaness, barely twenty-five, did not shiver or shudder before me. I liked that.

(When taking souls, I always granted brave ones quick release. A man who would not fear death is a man I respect- being death.)

She asked me, " Why do some men hate us? Why… why do the good ones always have to falter, and die; fail, and be cast aside when we have saved all the lives we can, only to be mocked and yelled at and kicked like trash in the street and…"

The flow of words could not be stopped; this was what she had learned, and it terrified her. I merely stood there, and listened; this child, whose age when compared to my own was negligible in the greatest, was speaking the words of my own heart.. She was putting together the pieces I, too, had found, weaving them together with the experience of her eyes and the hatred of her heart.

She was telling me that it wasn't normal evil, the murdering and monstrous kind, that bothered her, but lies.

" Lies," she said to me, as she stood there speaking with Death and not retreating in the slightest, " are what I hate, the idea that everything we do can be put in such a light as to be monstrous. I heal, I protect, I am good, and still- still- there are those who wish to have those like me burned at the stake."

We spoke for what seemed like hours- or _she_ spoke; I merely stood there, listening. She was touching on everything I myself had thought, and I found no reason to intervene in her words. There was a truth there, and a hatred, I found very attractive.

It was much like my own.

" And the Kiltia," she was shouting, at that point, railing against the world, " they do everything they can, I've seen it, I'm not part of their religion myself but damn if they don't save as many people as we do. They fight, they die, they give everything in defense of a world that hates them. And then what happens when they try to enter a major city? They are thrown out, and publicly reviled, sometimes killed if they are unlucky. The people hate them for no reason I can even fathom."

" Halt," I said, and it was here I saw the look in her face- the fierce determination, the hatred of evil.

I had a plan. It was a mere rough outline so general in shape that it was almost formless, but it was there.

" I understand," I said, " and I approve."

-

We came to the conclusion that this kind of evil, this kind of lies, this kind of _ignorance_, had to be stopped.

By any means necessary.

We gathered together like-minded souls of the dead- easy enough for me- and they became our army. They are with us even now, though only at the height of my powers- when the enemies of my summoner are near death and I can recall what it felt like to end a life- that I can send them forth with my shamaness' aid.

We started hunting, finding those who displayed the most untruth, who spread the most horrendous lies. We gave everything to defend a hundred different practices, a hundred different peoples, from the injustice and ignorance of the populace about them. Kiltia, shamans, druids and Seeq were all the ones we defended.

(The racist organization of the times was single-handedly destroyed by us in one night. Being death gives one advantages in attempts to kill mortals.)

It was… unlawful, what we did, as I am only allowed to deliver the dead, not kill them myself. My shamaness, riding my shoulder like some sort of strange puppet master, delighted in the destruction of these evils, that the gods had told us to forgive and ignore. I did, too.

I could not stand those who, when I delivered them to death, pretended that they had done nothing wrong. It was one thing to be evil, and know it; and foolish to be evil and pretend towards good.

Hypocrisy was a major target of ours, the hypocrisy of many. They and liars were all killed by us, my appearance the last they knew of this earth before dead souls ripped them to shreds and carried them to hell.

But eventually, we were found out- noticed- and the gods, rather than realizing the truth of our situation, that the good in humanity was more in danger from the choking weeds of lies than from the blatant evil of men, locked us up, sealed us away.

We do not blame them. We understand their choice.

It is just that… we know that we cannot survive in that kind of system, where good men nearly die for others and return home to be hated. We cannot survive, cannot put up with- and will _not_ put up with- being pushed down and mocked for what we are. Evil we can deal with, when it comes at us in swords and shields; but mockery, hatred for the good we have done?

That we will never, ever bow down to.

When the Espers launched their war, Mateus found out about us and freed us to serve them; we went willingly. To change the world as we hoped to, the gods would have to go.

It is nothing against them. It is simply, the rules have to change. After the war was over, we were going to assassinate the other Espers or subjugate them, and begin a new rule in the universe.

(We never planned on letting Ultima- Heaven forbid!- rule the universe. As I said, Evil we know how to deal with, and Ultima was that if anything ever was.)

We were unusual, we knight errants. An Esper of death, a shamaness of earth, the dead souls of warriors and veterans tired of being hated, we fought not for powe,r or tragedy, or gain, but to see the world changed.

I wonder if the other Espers ever thought about that?

And this Viera, this Fran? She understands us well, I think, sees something of her relationship with Balthier in that of me and my shamaness, my love. But, she also claims that she thinks our viewpoint cannot hold, that we risk becoming tyrants rather than upholders of justice by going down our path; so she has told me, in her mind.

(As a Viera, she is much more in tune with her summons, her Espers, than the others- one reason she has picked so few to serve her.)

I understand her viewpoint, though I do disagree considerably- not as much as I might have at an earlier time, though. For my shamaness is still with me, merged into my very makeup, part of my right arm. We are content in our ways.

The thought of changing the universe still piques our mind, holds our interest. But now it is taken up, sometimes, by the mere existing; the being, day in and day out, of our everyday lives.

Sometimes… I wonder, if this is the gods' way of granting me peace, forgiveness really winning out in the end over all.

If so, I am content.

-

_He will never get redemption; unlike Shemhazai, who will go home one day, Zalera will remain in the mortal world, forever bound, to keep him, his love, and the dead souls that guard them from repeating their mistakes of the past, as they will if freed- the Death Seraph and his consort made a conscious decision to do what they did centuries ago, and it stands still. Where there is no change, there can be no freedom._

_But the gods understand, in some ways, the anger of the Esper of Death; they understand, even as they disapprove, what could drive someone to do as they have done, and perhaps they have forgiveness, in some small way._

_For Zalera, while he will never be free, will have this gift:_

_He will be at peace._

R&R please.


	19. IOS: Expected

SURPRISE!!!!

We aren't going to begin the second round of character chapters just yet!

… I've got a _special_ treat for you all in mind.

Welcome to the first chapter in the Interlude of Secrets, the Other Side: the villains of Final Fantasy XII.

First up, the betrayer: Vossler!

IT'S…

"SHOWTIME!"

**An Interlude of Secrets:**

**The Other Side**

Expected

Sometimes, standing here, in this dirty, stinking, cramped corner of Rabanastre's lower levels, Vossler still can't keep his face from crinkling up at the stink.

He's been here for years- two, to be exact, since the soldiers who overran Rabanastre have been looking for him since day one. And even so, the smell of the part of the city _he_ never traveled into when he was a knight sometimes makes him want to gag. His disgust is thick as fog, thick as steel; he can nearly _spit_ when he feels the darkness and nastiness and filth of it all rising up

(almost to get him, he'd swear, if he hadn't put away such childish imaginings long ago.)

He is leader of the Resistance, though technically Ashe leads them; the identity of "Amalia" is the one she uses but Vossler sometimes wonders just who she thinks she's fooling. These are _soldiers_ here; men and women who have fought and died and nearly gone mad for this country that was once their own and has since become the enemy's. They have been many things but they have never been stupid. Ashe's true identity is as obvious to most of them as her real position- that of figurehead, their token noble- is to all.

(He cannot hide- no matter what- that Ashelia is of noble birth, even from the peasants outside the Resistance who can't make the connection between Amalia and their dead princess. For one thing, she has no calluses on her hands; and her manner of walking is too proud. She is used to looking down on the ones she would beat for touching her, rather than being used to being the one beaten.)

Ashelia is their key to legitimacy in the wider world once they throw the Empire out of Dalmasca; she is noble and they are not, and in this world that means they have no power and no legitimacy. The Empire might claim that it had no nobility, but it did- they just called them aristocrats and they owned all the seats on the Council. Democracy was an idea whose time had not yet come; and if it did, Vossler thinks it his more cynical moments, people like him- the ones who had suffered the most- would be the last to get it, and begrudgingly at that.

So while Ashelia is highly important to the Resistance's plans, she is less important for herself than for the blood running in her veins- and it's not like she has a tactical mind, or a head for logistics. She's an incredible fighter- that much he'll give her, terrifying the weapons master into giving her swords when everyone else made do with rusty old daggers and proving it a good choice- but in dealing with tactics, giving logistics? She's not good with those things. That's Vosslers' purpose.

He does not regret this often, since it gives him a chance to save his people without any damned nobleman's influence.

-

The greatsword he wields is his signature weapon. He's not sure how it got that way.

(He sure as hell didn't plan it, since not having a signature- or even being easily recognizable- is a huge help when fighting in the Resistance and now he has to hide his greatsword everywhere he goes. Hiding a five-foot long hunk of metal is exactly as hard as it sounds.)

However, it's not enough to dissuade him from wielding them. After all, greatswords _are_ his weapon. He's just mad that the Empire figured it out.

Why? Well, mostly, it has to do with his situation and his belief. Vossler has always gone with the flow- always believed you should accept the choices before you and accept them wholeheartedly. He believes that what one must do is what one is _expected_ to do, and so he has damn near died fighting for his king. It was what was expected of him. He fought with sword and shield, because on battlefields, each soldier a brick in the wall against enemy assault and it is expected that you will take as good as you give, so Vossler was a man who could defend and attack.

But in guerilla warfare, hit and run raids? It is expected to do damage, to do it fast, and to kill with each strike so that, if he only gets one strike, that is one less enemy he will need to kill in the future. He does not care that he greatly prefers sword and shield, or (if he lets this part of himself tell its secret) would much prefer a gun; that is his favorite weapon but the weapon is too slow- he would get only one shot off before the raid was over, and he must kill more than one each time if he is to do real damage to the Archadians.

This is his life. He does what he is expected to do.

That is why he will betray Ashe, so very soon. Why he will make sure that her sky pirate friends (and how surprised was he to see them! What was Ashe doing, making allies in places below her station? He knew he should have kept her under his thumb) disappear, preferably in a violent, final way. It is expected of him to save his country.

They never asked how.

He doesn't really prefer this method, would much rather like to hold the Emperor in his hands and choke the life out of the son of a bitch. But the truth is, that approach would _never_ work; the Resistance doesn't have enough men to fight the Archadians, the bloody Rozarrians don't even have that many men. So no matter what he would _like_ to do, or perhaps _should_ do, he instead will do what he must- and if that means betraying Ashe horribly, that is simply too bad.

He has always gone with the flow. The greatsword that characterizes him does not, in fact, characterize him at all, not the real Vossler, the man inside the armor; he likes to take his drink light and sweet, since stronger alcohol actually makes his stomach upset. He has always enjoyed terribly tearful, sappy romance plays and goes to them whenever he can.

(He's cried at several.)

But this Vossler… this Vossler might as well not exist. Because all that matters is _you do what is expected of you, you do what you must do_, and this was drilled into him so deep by what he has seen and what he has done that he could be nothing else. He will do what he is expected to do.

And just like his greatsword, what is expected of him has always been what he has done.

It was always his choice to obey.

-

R&R please! I'm hoping these boys will be a good surprise for everyone… 


	20. IOS: Children of Light

Secret chapter 2! You'll be very surprised at who it is... Zargabaath, my favorite Judge Magister! He gave some much needed grayness to an otherwise totally evil group.

(Well, Drace and Gabranth kinda sorta get excluded, but Gabranth really is evil- to his own brother!- and Drace dies, so... yeah.)

Now that I think about it, he gave some longevity to that group, too, since he's the only one that makes it through your mad one-person rampage to kill all the judges. Way to go for Judge Magisters! Them: 1. You: 6!

Also, his willingness to die at the end of the game to save the city of Rabanastre touched me. A man that willing to die for people who weren't even his own is a man I can _respect_.

So, now, it's...

"SHOWTIME!"

An Interlude of Secrets:

The Other Side

Children of Light

_My daughter_, he thought, looking at her as he tucked her into bed, _is the source of my pride, the wellspring of my happiness, the thing I love most._

Zargabaath was happy. He was content, now, the war between his duty and his honor complete and Vayne dead.

(That thought freed him, sometimes. Vayne was dead. He thought this concept every morning and lived life happy because of it.)

Since he no longer had to contemplate whether he must kill his Emperor to serve his Empire, or serve his Emperor to kill his Empire, Zargabaath could live free, and the way he wanted to: with his daughter.

Zargabaath was a good man, and no good man could see what Vayne was doing and not go about trying to stop it. He had been contemplating his own attack on Vayne before the bastard fell; he would not see the Empire he loved destroyed by the evil of one man. He believed in the Empire, in the democracy it represented and the good, the ability of the people to raise their hands and shout _We will choose you to be our king_, and he would not see one man tear it down.

(Of course, Vayne was living proof that you could always manipulate the voters, but that was a danger Zargabaath was willing to take. At the very least, he'd had to work for it. In any other system on the planet, Vayne could have just napped until his father died and then taken the throne, evil as ever, and to Zargabaath, you couldn't eliminate all risk- just deal with it when it came.)

In Zargabaath's mind, the Empire was good. But the one thing Zargabaath also believed- and it set him apart from a lot of truly good men in his country- was that Empire must really _be_ good, must actually _be_ all those things it held that it was, to truly deserve its power. Thus, the reason he hated Vayne. Zargabaath has been kind to the lands under his occupation and they have repaid him for it in loyalty a hundred times over, to him and the Empire he calls home.

(The way Archadia treated Dalmasca was a subject Zargabaath frequently brought up in meetings when the territory was under their sway, and it's current freedom is something he celebrates every year with a small wineglass and an excellent port which he received, ironically, from Vayne's personal stash, since Emperor Larsa had auctioned off all Vayne's personal effects to aid in Dalmasca's restoration. The funds raised had been considerable, since the former Emperor had a considerable stash of well-made clothes, wine, and, surprisingly, more pairs of boots than anyone knew what to do with. A man who loved his boots, Vayne was.)

Zargabaath would give everything for the people- and not just the Empire's. There is a woman, in the streets of Archadia, who puts a rose on the grave of her husband every year on the anniversary of his death. He was shot to pieces when he tried to save the life of an enemy civilian on the battlefield.

Zargabaath trained the man himself. He believed that any man who would dare to call himself _Judge_ over another man had to- above all else- hold himself to the highest conduct. He could not say _I am Judge_ and then not live up to it.

This was not just Zargabaath's idea, though. This was the idea of his entire people.

He tells the story to his daughter at night.

" Tell me the story, Daddy," says his little girl, her small form giving no indication of the great height she will attain (when full grown, she will be a foot taller than her father), " about the first Zargys!"

Zargabaath remembered that name well; when he was little and in Children's Akademy, he never could spell his last name (_is it two a's or one?_) and so the teacher let him get away with Zargy. He lets his daughter get away with it too; who in the world has time to spell all that when they are little, the sun is shining, and the wind is playing outside?

(Even then, when he was a grown man with a child, half the reports he received misspelled his name, and he found it very hard to be angry with the poor scribes who wrote them- hell, he couldn't spell it on the spot himself if he couldn't take a moment to think.)

" Well," he begins, " there was once a man, and his name was Edgar, and he was famous for his machines and his ponytail and his unique way with women..."

" Not that one," she clarifies. " Before him."

" Well, before him, there once was a man, and his name was Cecil, and he was a dark man but a good one who eventually became light..."

" Not him!" she says, finally getting impatient. " The first one! The very first!"

He smiles to himself as he remembers the story that is the start of them all.

" There once was a man, all the way back at the beginning, who was a farmer, who tilled the land and filled the soil with seeds. He was a happy man, if a little lonely. He wished for great and grand adventures, but knew enough to realize that he couldn't well abandon his duties to run off and pursue them, so he stayed put."

"Then one day, he found an orb, a great, smooth glass that was dark inside, that had appeared in the bucket of his well when he was trying to haul water up one day. The orb was more than just a ball, though; it was a magic thing of great power."

" It could talk, this orb, and it told him many things. It said that it was the Orb of Water, and that Water had to find a new champion now, just like the other three elements, Earth and Fire and Air. It said that the world was dying, that each element was being weakened to the point that the whole world could collapse. And so they needed champions."

" But the element's old champions, men they had chosen from their own elements, had failed them, long ago, when they needed them; and in that was the reason the world itself was dying. The elements decided to choose new ones, those who were not connected to their element; and perhaps in that very incongruity, they would find a way to destroy what had once bested them at their own game. Thus, a man who was a child of Earth, a farmer, became Water's choice. Under its guidance, he left his farm, and followed the voice of the orb to a land called Corneria.. And there he met three others, and they were the remaining champions.

" The other champions!" she said, perking up. " Tell me about them!"

She always did love this part. " There was a cowardly mage who hid his face from the world but was very brave in his cowardice; he would shriek and scream at everything they fought, but he never, ever backed down. Air chose him, because Fire had always taken black mages, and they had decided to change."

" The red lady, wearing a feather in her wide-brimmed, bright red hat, who always wore a mask over her face- though no one ever knew why. She was a swordsman _and_ a spellcaster, and it was Earth who took her- Earth, who had always taken to simple folk, and had never taken one so complex and complicated as this woman who wore a mask over her face and sometimes spoke in rhyme. "

" Finally, the healer, who was a very old woman, so old her red hair was but wispy strands on her head, and who muttered that she was too old for this with damn near every breath with a cantankerous sneer. And underneath all that was a thread of kindness. Fire, who had initially chosen her because Fire represented Youth and she was far past that, eventually came to realize it was that very kindness- like a warm, gentle fire- it truly admired in her, despite her outer protests of annoyance to all and sundry."

" They all met, then, and they went on their quest, the orb quest, to save the whole world."

" And the farmer," his daughter, whispering, because this is what her people are and the thought thrills her, " became a swordsman."

" Yes," Zargabaath replied. " He thought he might need it. He ended up even better than the lady- hands that work the fields become strong- and so they became the first heroes."

" They saved the world, didn't they?"

" Yes." He smiles. This is his people, he thought, and on through the line has come both he and his daughter and the children that will come after her. This is his people. " They did, and from desert to ocean to windswept plains so wide and high you could touch the sky beneath them, they journeyed on. And they finally saved it."

She smiles, nods, happy. She is smarter than she should be at her age and she understands one thing: this is her people. This is what it means to be Zargabaath, and all the names her people have held up to now: to be a descendant of the first heroes.

" So now it's up to us to keep the world safe, isn't it?"she says, voice small and tiny; this truth is great and before it all words are little more than whispers..

" Yes, my little one. It is. "

She smiles, burbling, happy; this is the choice of her people. It makes her feel... grand.

To know one has the bloodline of heroes.

Zargabaath left the room where he knew his daughter would eventually fall asleep smiling and dreaming happy dreams.

The irony? He himself would do the same. To know one was a child of light was to know peace.

And as he went to be, he pondered that, at this very moment, when almost no one in the entire world knew what the Light Warriors were, much less what they had done? Beating back evil at the start of forever? Had pushed back the final fantasy, the last ending? It was a secret that Zargabaath knew. He and his family knew. And all the cousins he has never seen

(He thought he caught a glimpse of him, once, when he said he would die to save a people; when he gave that order, and thought that his daughter would be the last Zargabaath, he caught a flash in his mind- was it a vision?- of a man wearing sunglasses and laughing and wearing the clothes of Rozarria. His family has spread far and wide.)

knew the secret as well. Here, so far into the future, Zargabaath and his people could shout the names of hundreds of heroes, _thousands _of heroes, who have stood and fought against the darkness. They can call the names of monsters

(_My name is Zeromus Exdeath Kefka and _**CHAOS**)

And know that their people have helped push them back. This is their people, and they will never die. Their choice, a combination of choices- his father's and his own, his daughter's and her daughter's choice, that, taken together, have made his family heroes.

It has always been _their_ choice. And they have never regretted it once.

-

_Imperial Notice_

_To: Judge Magister Gabranth_

_From: Judge Magister Zargabaath_

_Re: Artifact_

_It has come to my attention, Lord Gabranth, that the recently unearthed pirate vessel found in the beaches near Archadia has confounded our scientific community, and come to your interest. I would like to take this moment to clarify matters, as I may know the truth of the matter._

_The vessel is the flagship of the pirate Farris; she was a mighty pirate lord who sailed these seas long, long ago, and it was her unique method of transportation that has so confused our archeologists. You see, Farris had a pet sea dragon; her ship was chained to the beast, explaining the large apparatus and rigging at the ship's front that our archeologists have claimed to be a "ram" of some sort- full knowing that the bronze it is made from would be a poor weapon._

_The lady Farris' story is one that runs in our family, and I thought I could share my knowledge to aid in the research being done on the vessel._

_Stamped with the seal of _

_**Judge Magister Zargabaath**_

_Imperial Notice_

_To: Judge Magister Zargabaath_

_From: Judge Magister Gabranth_

_Re: Artifact_

_Your explanation makes much better sense, Zargabaath, than what our scientists are proposing to me, but I'm afraid they don't see it that way. Most of the expedition has dismissed your story out of hand as "trivial nonsense" and insist that the ship could not possibly have been conveyed by water dragon, since the bone structure of the sea dragons of our time is too weak to move a ship this big. They still insist on believing it to be a ram, though for the reasons you already mentioned it and its own odd shape it would work quite poorly in that capacity._

_I have decided to suspend all scientists working on this ship, as their lack of explanations and constant arguments are simply wasting Imperial money, and I have reason to believe you are correct in your assumption anyway._

_The reason?_

_There is a collar at the end of the structure. More importantly, attempts to decipher it have shown that it says "Pet" in an old language._

_The ironic part is that the scientists insist that this must be the name of the ship. And they claim _your_ explanation is unreasonable!_

_Stamped with the seal of the office of_

_**Judge Magister Gabraanth**_

- I love Zargabaath- he's easily the best person on the Imperial side in the game, even including Larsa- so here's my ode to you, little man!


	21. IOS: Lizard Skinned

Been a while, huh? Sorry, went through mid-terms, which was not so bad but did require me to type so much I developed carpal tunnel _twice_.

(It was really quite fascinating, albeit… painful.)

So, here we go, with… Ba'Gamnan! The lizard with the chainsaw. Easily my vote for favorite weapon in the whole game.

(First time I saw it, I was like "Where the hell's the license for that thing?!? I want one!" Come on, you all know you want to see Penelo wielding it. That would just be the greatest thing EVER.)

With no mind to make you wait any longer than I already have, I declare it…

"SHOWTIME!"

An Interlude of Secrets

The Other Side

Lizard Skinned

He hates.

Ba'Gamnan has thought this since he was hatched, since he came into the world blind and mewling and hungry, and his first thought when finding the food laid out for him was _this world isn't so bad_. A place that fed you when you cried wasn't such a bad place at all.

But then he found out the truth, the _real_ truth, that Humes, who through sheer ferocity of numbers could best all the races, hated his people. Hated _all_ people, actually, who happened to be different from them, and were quite violent in upholding that hate. He remembers that they have killed his people for fun and for their skins, for the teeth that some believe can be used as an aphrodisiac.

It's not like they haven't tried to fight them. In some ways, that's the worst part. All races have tried to beat the Humes, and all have failed. Bangaa are the strongest of all races, each individual worth ten Hume soldiers.

(So the Humes send twenty men for every Bangaa and drown them in a wave of blades. The land Archades stands on was once Bangaa territory, taken from them in a battle that killed five hundred thousand Bangaa and over a million Humes. Those five hundred thousand were nearly the whole of the Bangaa race in the north; the million was not even a quarter of all the Hume invaders from the south.)

The Viera were the greatest mages. Each was worth ten lesser Hume mages.

(So the Humes, who couldn't puncture through Viera magical shields with a single attack, instead overwhelmed them with pinpricks, hundreds and thousands of spells all directed at might magic shields, all weak, all bound and determined to get through eventually- and soon, more spells hit in the exact same spot and they break through. Where force would not have worked, the magic of chance and numbers did.)

The Seeq were durable, possessed of a survivability in harsh conditions that would kill Humes, capable of bearing the brunt of winter and the heat of deserts with equal ease, a laugh shaking their great bellies.

(So the Humes, attacking them in their mountain homes, warred through sheer attrition, losing half their men each battle to the cold and not the Seeq; but that was fine when you outnumbered them twenty to one.)

They have lost, all of them. Except Moogles, who may have been the only victors against Humes because they became invisible and cute, good traits to avoid the juggernaut that was Man. Ba'Gamnan didn't know how bad it was until the day he came to Archades and nearly died, having simply stepped into the wrong part of the city, staring at all the walls like the country boy he was, not noticing the men around him until it was too late.

(Was it a street gang? Sometimes he prays that he could believe it was, but no. This was a random grouping of men, gathered simply to beat the freak. If it had been a street gang, he could have shrugged it off- all places have bad apples, and how could he expect a gang, lowest of the low, to give him peace and safety? But it was normal men of Archades, normal men. This thought is what makes him bitter.)

But Bangaa durability is a wonderful thing, and none of the men were smart enough to have thought of bringing weapons to the fight; Ba'Gamnan, who was not just a Ba'Gamnan but a country boy, raised a worker, easily bested them all with a few blows of his open hand and judicious use of his elbows.

(Unlike what every Hume he has ever met has thought, the Bangaa do not, in fact, use their tails in battle. It's a thick, floppy thing that is surprisingly delicate when it comes to pain, and Bangaa do not like hitting things with it- intentionally or not. This is the one thought Ba'Gamnan cannot blame Humes for thinking- he sometimes wishes he could use the thing for something himself.)

But it was the actions of the guard, above everything else, that shocked and scared Ba'Gamnan; the actions of the city guard after the wife of one of the men he was beating senseless called them to action. He had just finished with the last one, a final _crack! _with his snout the blow that knocked the young man senseless, and he'd just turned around to turn himself in.

(He understood that they'd have to question him, he did just beat the crap out of four men, but he figured they'd clear it up at the jail)

That was when the first guard to reach him struck him nearly senseless.

He would have died that day, if the first guard had not caught him by surprise; thinking the guards would be like the Humes of his hometown, of his place out in the fields and the grass, the men who didn't give a damn what you were so long as you left them alone and were friendly to them, he was so shocked by the first guard's strike with mailed fist that he fell over. The crossbow bolt _twanged_ through the air above his head, right where his heart would have been if he hadn't fallen.

He turned as fast as he could and _ran_, long legs and the Bangaa muscles that let their people be the first Dragon Knights giving him speed enough to evade capture, to escape. Later, when he thought himself safe in a secluded spot, a lonely, empty place, his fears released and he broke down sobbing. He had just been horribly, horribly betrayed.

He had not been the Bangaa equivalent of nineteen for six months when that had happened.

Things went quickly, if blurrily, after that; denied a place in the larger city, with guards looking to claim his head (and he'd been there just to see the city, imagine that?), he'd wandered around until his nose told him there were other Bangaa nearby, and he'd sought them out. There are holes in every city, places where anything goes and the rule of nobody is guaranteed; yet another reason to hate the cities he has come to loathe, for being filthy places that the bureaucracy can not even control, but that lack of control saved his life in those tumultuous days.

He'd like to say he found his companions then and there, and became a mighty bounty hunter immediately afterward, brimming with revenge and hatred towards Humes, Archadia, and all and sundry. That would be a lie.

Instead, he found a nice, humble Bangaa family who were relatively well off.

(Turned out one of their girls was a prostitute, who worked the Bangaa neighborhoods and brought home enough money to keep her parents, old and infirm, alive. They loved her despite what she had to do, accepting it as doing what one had to do. Ba'Gamnan has never met braver people.)

They gave him a place to stay and heal his wounds, being fed and doing small things around their house for the week or two it took to get his face out of the papers and get out of the city. They had been very kind and Ba'Gamnan still tries to visit them every now and then, though his life as a bounty hunter means he does it later rather than sooner.

That had been his first visit to Archades.

It was not his last.

-

Becoming a soldier is one thing. Becoming Judge is entirely another.

Ba'Gamnan wants to be a judge.

He figured- with the simple logic of country folk- that if the Judges made all the rules, then becoming a Judge could fix the problems with Archadia. He didn't care to change the opinions of the people, to change their "heart"; that was childish, in his opinion. He just wanted to change the law, the rules. If Hume wanted to hurt Bangaa, they could do it to their heart's content.

But they damn well better expect the gallows to be waiting for them when they were done.

Ba'Gamnan cannot become a judge. It is, quite literally, written in the law of Archadia. So he has done the next best thing:

He has acquired a pet Judge.

Gabranth uses him as his knife, having Ba'Gamnan and his hand-picked crew assassinate, eradicate, and otherwise demolish those targets that the military is too slow to deal with- or to do deeds that are too dark to be revealed to the public with military action. Ba'Gamnan is comfortable with this; he will, much like the daughter of the couple that protected him in his first visit to Archadia, do whatever he must to save his people.

In return, Ba'Gamnan is a whisper in Gabranth's ear, telling the general things he needs to know, being a spy for him where Gabranth does not have one, and above all else, advising him in military matters.

Gabranth is a terrible general.

(He has no personal charisma, carrying the buried weight of all his people's dead on his back like a private coffin and maintaining a dour personality besides. He also has no head for tactical sense- Ba'Gamnan often has to correct his plans for the most minor and obvious of mistakes. Gabranth attained his position through his willingness to sully himself for Vayne's benefit and his unrelenting ability to kill anyone who got within reach of his double-headed spear, not his military genius.)

So Ba'Gamnan has attained the position he needs- power over a Magister- and he is using it to protect his people. He is coming up with laws, through Gabranth, that can save his people.

(Already, it is illegal to kill Bangaa for thievery, a huge victory. Before, Bangaa who stole were considered non-persons in the legal realm- and therefore, material for a fun evening filled with the kicking of a lizard on the gallows and the delighted laughs of Hume children.)

And, yes, enforcement is a problem. But Zargabaath is helping them, because the Magister hates people who don't follow the law and has a habit of killing those Judges below him who abstain from their duties, and Gabranth himself- for all his lack of charm or even tact- is whole-heartedly helping Zargabaath cull those guards from the system who will not obey the new rules.

He is doing what he set out to do.

And while there are annoyances in his side- like the sky pirate Balthier, who will not _die_ and seems to enjoy needling Ba'Gamnan for the sheer hell of it- Ba'Gamnan is, on the whole, okay with where he is in life.

He will not rest until, one day, the Bangaa of Archadia can stand up and say " We are your people."

It was always his choice.

-Hope you guys like! R&R please!


	22. IOS: Worth

Man, I'm glad of the response I've gotten to the entire AIOS series. Thought it'd be nice to take a break and show you people some of the other lovely folks running around the FFXII universe. I didn't like most of the Judges (Zargy excepted), but some of the other villains had a bit more dimension to them and deserved a second chance.

So now, we head up to the second to last piece… A very special piece about the man who would be Emperor, Vayne! Which is the worst name ever.

(Except for Vaan. He's named after a type of car… I guess someone from FFXIII is going to have to be named Truuck. )

Also, a bit of hilarious news for those of you who've been reading this author's notes. I'm currently saving up twenty five dollars a week until I can buy a PS3, mostly because I own a Wii and every game on it, with the exceptions of Zelda and Metroid (which surprised me because hey! I don't like Metroid games!), sucks.

(Fire Emblem? I used to love you, but then you became twelve years old and I had to abandon you. I'm sorry, love, we've been together for years now, but when you went from the little system to the big system, you went from being for big boys to little ones. I'm sorry.)

Current account: $25. Let's see how high I get before breaking down…

So now, it's…

"SHOWTIME!"

An Interlude of Secrets

The Other Side

Worth

I will not be broken here.

I stand in the middle of the training grounds of the House of Solidor, the house named to be strong as the sun.

(Our first ancestor stood before a rising tide and broke it down with nothing but a twisted battleaxe and his refusal to give up, to lie down, to die. I have never forgotten that.)

I stand here, and I think while taking a short break from my never-ending training, and I wonder if my family ever used swords. Swords, those things that all great noble families are supposed to wield.

(The rulers of Dalmasca- a tiny country below our Empire, it's mostly sand so nobody goes there- has entire legends built on various swords.)

The answer, my mind comes up with in something like a surprise, is never. My father has not used swords, he prefers lances for the range and strength. His father was an archer, and all of his brothers preferred crossbows. My brother almost wields swords, but doesn't- he uses twin cutlasses, almost-daggers but not-quite-swords.

(He became enchanted with the weapons after seeing a fight in Balthonheim where one pirate- surrounded by three swordsman intent on using their weapon's length to cut him before he could reach them- blurred through them in a ripping tide of steel and edges. The sheer speed with which cutlasses can strike intrigues Larsa, I imagine- he does have a bit of flair for the dramatic, his suit all ruffles and laces and the entire silk produce of a small factory wrapped around one small boy. He rather looks like a stuffed pillow, I think.)

It's strange, really, in Archadia- land of tradition- that not one of my family has ever wielded a sword. Even our first ancestor, now that I look back upon it, was an axeman, a soldier who preferred what he knew to the ceremonial sword he was presented with when he became a noble in those pre-Imperial days. All of the judges wield swords, with the exception of Gabranth; Drace, and Zargabaath, and even Ghis (though that last was always a mage and prefers an enchanted fan in battle). Bergan even wields two swords, which I guess makes some kind of statement as to the pride he takes in his ability to kill people before they can kill him.

(My father always said that any man who wields two weapons is dancing with death, and only his skill at killing others first with the quickest hit was able to keep him in step. Judging from that perspective, Bergan is a very quick man.)

But my family has never touched a sword, all throughout our long, dark history. I do not know why we are called sun children, I do not know why light seems to be our symbol- but we are the darkest of all families, the family that has decided to rule the Empire even though the days of kings and monarchies were over. The family history is deep, complex, troubled; we hide it even from ourselves, though old records in the family mansion have told me where to find it.

(I found it in other mansions, in rotted castles and mighty sepulchers and places so dead it choked you to look at them. We have always run, we have, from our past. We do not like to remember that our first ancestor was a solider. We do not like to remember that we come from the same places as those we look down upon.)

But I? I like the family history. I like knowing that I come from good stock, humble stock. I like knowing that nobility is not, in fact, my birthright, but the common man.

I know how history will judge me. Poor arrogant Vayne, he couldn't stand not being next in line to the throne so he killed his brothers off. Poor arrogant Vayne, pathetic little man-boy who wanted to be king.

But that's not who I really am.

(I start my training again, striking the sand-filled bag before me. Punch punch punch, kick. Never start with a kick; they are slow, and unwieldy. The power makes it worth it, but you have to knock them off balance first)

I am a man who will prove that it is his own two hands, not his birthright, not his privilege, that will get him where he is going. I will prove

( to make it worth it; combat is all about timing, timing is key. Punch punch punch)

myself to be a man worthy of being an Emperor, worthy of being king, dominant in his own person because I have made myself that way. I have

(_punch_, because switching your pattern is a good idea every once in a while and a martial artist has enough moves to change his pattern every single time. End with an uppercut, nobody expects them and the blow to the chin hurts. Punch punch)

planned the overthrow of countries, the development of weapons, and the oversight of military operations. In all of this, I have been worthy. In all of this

(somersault, it's a good trick and distracts people, intimidates them to see your form hurl through the air and land without a breath in between. The foot in your opponent's face is an additional bonus. Punch kick punch)

I have proven that it is me, myself, and not my position, nor my subordinates, who have performed the commands. I have proven myself worthy in these fields.

(sweep kick, the bag doesn't extend all the way to the floor so I miss it but the point is to get it in your head as to what you are doing to your opponent, not hitting the bag. Take the momentum of the sweep and spin it into a roundhouse backhand. No roundhouse kicks, though, they leave you open and you spin too fast to get a good look at the battlefield, unlike with a punch.)

I have what it takes to be Emperor, the combination of steel and rot that allows me the ability and the will, respectively, to do horrible things if I must. I have killed my own kin, and will kill my own kin again, to prove that my birthright is also not my curse.

I will sit on the throne of this kingdom.

And when I do so it will be _me_, not some weapon, not some force, not some thrice-damned bloodline, but _me_, and if I am attacked it will be no weapon that will guard me. How could I trust something I had not put through the same fires as myself?

(A spark- a concentration, perhaps?- and my fist goes through time and space and obliterates the bag through my sheer force of will. My father always warned me about using Mist in this place, where there isn't much to begin with, but I find I can corral the Mist if I concentrate enough and gather the strands. There isn't enough mist for those who are too _weak_ to pull them together, but for someone like me, it is as simple as filling a cup with wine.)

My hands are good enough to break steel. In many ways, they are the only thing that is fitting for my will to wield- a flesh that refuses to break, even to metal.

It has always been my choice.

-R&R please!


	23. IOS: Prepared

Hey people!

...There is an excellent reason I haven't even been existing for the past little while. It starts with a P, ends with a 3, and has an S in the middle.

Guess. :)

(My mother is the most awesome person in the entire world. She heard my incredibly awesome/bizarre plan to save money each week until I got a PS3, told me she hadn't got any presents for me for Christmas yet- and bought me a PS3.)

(I love my mom.)

Also, Folklore seems fantastic, but oh my goodness. The Orange Box.

HALF-LIFE 2.

It's the best FPS I've ever played. Hands-down. Halo kind of sucks in comparison- the storyline of Half-life 2 is so friggin' fantastic, and the balance so neat, that all Halo has in comparison is the sheer number of people who play it. I've never been any place that scared me as much as Ravenholm, the Combine is the most intelligent alien group I've ever seen both story and gameplay-wise- they fight like real people!- and the cast of characters around you is simply fantastic, Dog and any of the Vortiguants in particular. (The G-Man also gets some absolutely incredible lines in this game- anybody who can say "crowbar coming at them down a steel corridor" just wins.) Alyx gets my vote for second best female character in a game- only Virginia Maxwell of Wild ARMS 3 fame beats the girl, and only by a bit.

PORTAL.

(I love you, GlaDos. Even as you scare the living hell out of me. Also, I so very much wish I had a Portal Gun in every game, because it's funnier than hell to walk into a ceiling and out of a wall.)

TEAM FORTRESS 2.

(I played the original, loved it, never looked at a Pyro. Now, I'm happily roasting folks because, damn, up close, even the Heavy Weapons Guy has trouble beating the flames!)

...I'M SURE THERE'S OTHER AWESOME STUFF TO PUT HERE IN ALL CAPS, BUT I CAN'T THINK OF ANY.

So, folks! If you like FPS games and own a PS3, go get the Orange Box. Go, shoo. It's awesome.

Also, you get to say you bought the Orange Box, which sounds ominous and mysterious. Much better than saying "Well, I got Ultimate Gorefest Bloodsucker 2000", or something like that.

So, adieu! Time to finish AIOS, in the first of a four-parter installment here! It's...

Well... you'll see. :)

It's...

"SHOWTIME!"

**An Interlude of Secrets:**

**The Other Side**

Prepared

I should never have started out here.

I should never have said, in the high and mighty council

(_I refuse to do this thing_)

And set out, body flying through the air, feeling free for the first time in a million centuries and finding a spot where I could talk to a man who could make ships fly. I should never have done that.

Because now, at the end of my redemption, when the stones are busted and the Age of Occuria is complete?

I realize that I have to die.

I cannot... cannot pretend that I have made up for half the sins I have done.

My sins... by all that is holy, has any other creature looked back in horror on such a river of blood? I have committed sins enough that they billow and pulse, nearly boil, behind a dam that is constructed only of my own will. If ever I let my self-control slip, the blood I have spilled will overwhelm the dam and spill out over me- and my conscious, my sanity, will be lost forever.

I am nearly mad with my own madness... it's not even irony at this point, it's justice. Justice for what I have done.

...Is this what the repentant criminal feels like, seeing the executioner's axe? Knowing his crimes were wrong- and that he also should not live?

It is odd, to predict your own death, and know it is right.

There is no comfort in it, but no condemnation either. It just is.

Not that my death will interfere with my plans. The Age of Stones is over; my existence or non-existence is of little consequence. If anything, I could flee, and live.

But I cannot do that now. It would be grand to survive... but I have committed such atrocities that my death would be a cleaner end. The honor, the nobility, that caused me to at last rebel and start a war against the Occuria have grown to include me as well. I realize my own evil.

Thus, it ends.

But I will not die alone. Vayne Solidor, the monster of the House of the Sun. You are not a weak, pathetic fool, as most think you, driven by your circumstances to seek the throne. You are not driven because of being a spoiled little rich boy.

That makes you considerably worse than if you were. You are instead driven because you have no morals and great willpower- a terrible combination. I recognize it because it was once what most defined me.

Therefore- in this last act of repentance- I will die with you, Vayne. I will trick you- I will give you enough strength to battle your foes (or so you think), and in the doing, absorb much of your precious _Bahamut_ into a new form. You and I, and your ship, will die, because I'm not going to give you enough strength to fight them- just enough to make you think you can. And just when you realize you've made a grave error, they will kill us- and me and you will both journey straight to Hell together.

My lone regret is that you were the weapon I was forced to use to end the Age of Stones. I could not trust Ashe, or any of her company- they were all too mad, too convinced that Dalmasca was special, somehow.

(Like any little country made of sand was special. No people was special- was that not why I was doing this? All were equal. None were grand. Not even the Occuria.)

Ashe would have used the stone with little or no hesitation, had I not been the omniscient villain, dropping venomous hints that perhaps the Stones were not all the answers she wanted. A friend's counsel is dismissed as well-meaning. An enemies' words are listened to with all the intentness of hate.

So you, Vayne Solidor, monster, became the weapon I wielded- you and Cid, though he at least had the excuse of being quite mad. You were my weapon.

It was never my choice, but I, Venat, the rogue Occuria, have not really had a choice.

I chose honor, and then... everything followed after that.

I choose death.

And I go to you with willing arms...

All I ask of the gods

(And I know already I ask too much)

Is that my actions mean something in the end.

I am prepared to die.

-For you, Venat, archvillian of all the series!


	24. Christmas Gift: With Bare Hands

Hey people! Because I made you wait forever and a day (orange box orange box orange box the cake is a lie!!!) here's an extra-special treat.

It's a series of one-shots over a fantastic idea: what if everyone in the party went fisticuffs? Always wanted to do a "bare-handed" idea, but never got enough material to work a whole solo piece- so I did a group shot. Here it is!

Enjoy!

It's...

"SHOWTIME!"

A Gift of Christmas

With Bare Hands

It's ironic, but about the only thing that unites them all is the fact that all of them use no weapon. It's for different reasons- they've asked each other why, because it's an amazing coincidence and good fodder for campfire stories- but for whatever reason why, they have all chosen to put their trust into themselves rather than weapons.

For Vaan, it's a natural choice; he was a poor boy on the streets, and couldn't afford a weapon for most of his life. He took to brawling, to scrapping, and it has served him well in this outer world where so very much seems to be trying to kill them. He has, surprisingly for his small size, become a grappler, a wrestling fighter; it turns out that he's quite unpredictable and quick in close quarters and he uses it to wring his opponent's neck. Thankfully for him, he's fast on his feet and he can _move_ when he needs to, and now he tends to act as the party's support. He rushes into combat and rushes out just as fast, so if anyone's in trouble he leaps in to help. It's what he excels at; pitched fights where he can't use his foot speed tend to go poorly for him.

(He's a very small man.)

After a battle that saw Vaan do much dashing back and forth, Balthier once laughed and called him the "commander" of their battles; he's always informing them of how the others are doing and things he's seen the others do that work on their current foes, or things that he's tried which don't work, and generally keeping them up on what was going on in the battle. He also pitched in for anyone he saw in trouble, like some hero out of old tales- boom! Into combat, and boom! A second after that, rushing off to help someone else, leaving a dead foe in his wake and an aided comrade in his debt. Ashe even once- in a rare joke for the bitter princess- told him he was kind of like a mommy who broke heads rather than eggs.

Vaan thought it was hilarious.

Penelo chose it because it was, in many ways, her family's choice. Her brother taught her but her family began it long before him, and as the last of the line, Penelo believes that it is her duty and her honor to carry it on. Of them, her style is the most archaic, the most formal; she even meditates, something none of the others do, doing it in the morning so that she can be calm in all fights during the day. Her friends learned in the midst of battle, tutored by those who were trying to kill them at the time, the name of their greatest tutor is desperation and the mother of their style is invention. They came up with their self-taught styles with their own knowledge from a few years of life.

Penelo has the ancient centuries and memories of thousands of warriors informing each and every maneuver she performs, wisdom the others could not match in a lifetime if they tried and forms honed through a million upon million battles. It has made her one of the most powerful warriors on the whole team. She is not much physically, a thin stick of a woman who is physically overpowered by practically everything they meet, but her form is flawless.

She even possesses the only equipment specifically suited to match her fighting style; while the others wear gauntlets and other accouterments that roughly complement their fighting styles, Penelo's equipment is the equipment designed for her style. Her giant, thick, weighted leather boots, as she herself puts it, "weren't made for walking". They allow her to break opponents without breaking her legs. Her shoulder pads, also weighted, counterbalance, allowing her to stand on one leg for hours on end. She is capable of maneuvers the others cannot even comprehend because of her equipment.

Her form is all kicks, no hands; her people believed in the power of the leg, thick bunched muscles, and her hands are used mostly to keep her balance. She breaks bones with thundering kicks and shakes opponents with earth-rattling stomps through their stomachs. She performs handstands to better let her feet do the work of killing others and she can block even the fiercest attack with a single upraised leg, and counter it the next second with a flip. Her form is archaic, but her enemies are dead- and that's all that ever mattered in battle.

(The others have taken to describing enemies in terms of how long it would take or has taken Penelo to kill them. A full minute with Penelo is the best most human opponents can do, and four full minutes of combat the longest anything has ever managed to last. Penelo is not sure what they mean by "a full Penelo minute" when describing a powerful foe, but has sense enough not to ask.)

Basch took it up in the prison where he spent so many years; when your only weapon is either a rusted dagger, a rock, or your fist, the best hope for long-term survival is to hone your strength. But Basch does not fight, not really; he defends. He blocks with his body, he bars the way, he keeps the foe from reaching them and of all of them, is easily the strongest. He has survived blows that would not kill lesser men, it would obliterate them, and he does it in defense of his friends. Basch is a hero.

(Penelo tends to team up with him. The foes focus on the tall, stalwart knight and ignore the slender little girl at his side- and die for it. Vaan checks on them as he checks on all, but rarely has to stop to help.)

Basch does it because he is used to fighting with many at his back (something none of them but Balthier has any experience with, and Balthier gave up the military years ago). He likes to protect, to defend, and it comes through in his fighting style. He is their defender, and if hard pressed, they will seek him, knowing he can give them the breath they need to get back into the fight. He is their guardian.

(When he does attack, he shows off the fact that a big opponent is the worst kind. It's hard to argue with a man weighing as much as Basch does when he is barreling right into you in the sort of body slam that giants dream of doing.)

Fran chose it because she loves to kill. It's the scariest fact about any member of the group; unlike the others, there's something wild in the Viera, something not usually present in members of her calm and controlled species that makes her mad. She has a bloodlust that consumes her from the inside out and gives her a grin that the dying in the Giza Plains know well because the hyenas wear it too. She is teeth and she is fangs; she hurls herself at opponents and rips them to shreds with her claws. She does not punch, she slashes. She needed no training and learned it from nowhere; it is animal instinct, pure and simple.

Fran gives into it, no matter how much the colder, more rational part of her mind disdains the rage, for various reasons. She tells herself that the reason why is that they need the power her bloodlust represents and that the others can control it. Both these things are true. Balthier can stop it with a word (is it love? Ask another question, for there are things that have no answer in short words) and the others can snap her out of it with a bit of work. Vaan has taken to the expedient of tugging on her ears when he runs past her if they need her to stop, because it makes her so mad she actually snaps out of battle rage.

(Vaan alone can do this. No one else is fast enough to get away in time.)

But the real reason is a bit scarier than that, and in the middle of her bloodlust, Fran knows it; thinks clearer when angry, and knows the answer to every question she's ever had since leaving the Green Word.

(_No, I do not regret leaving the Green. I regret not having known the sky before now, I regret that Balthier will die when I don't because I love him, I regret being so controlled when I now feel so free... but I do not regret leaving the Green_.)

In her hatred, Fran realizes that she likes to rampage because she feels free. When she rages, she crows it out to the whole world. I am Fran, I am free, and the Green can hold me back no longer! It is her freedom, and, ironically, her happiness, that drives her ferocity in combat. She is not angry; she is free. She enjoys killing because it is wrecking her will on the universe, and not the other way around; her control on others, rather being controlled herself.

(Fran has but one weakness; her whirling, slashing style is very much a bad thing for her allies, and she tends to cut them accidentally in combat. Therefore, she always fights alone. It's not conducive to camaraderie to waste hours patching up wounds given to you by a friend, and she feels bad about it afterward, so she fights alone.)

Ashelia learned her trade in a markedly different arena than that of street brawls, prisons, or ancestral training; animal instinct is part of it, but not the animal instinct of Fran. Whereas the Viera gives in to a rage that wolves and tyrants know well, a roar of power and cry of might, Ashe has the cunning of the wildsnakes and serpents to guide her. She has lived for two full years in the shadows of the place called Rabanastre; it has been a lifetime spent fighting in the dark. She has had to kill, and kill quickly, silently, or the whole rebellion would fall apart because of her failure.

So she fights like a murderer. She chokes, she strangles from behind, she pushes thumbs through eye sockets into brains and snaps necks. She murders.

She has managed to learn how by having whispered conversations with killers, through thick prison bars; her payment for training was food slipped between and, at the end, a bottle of fast poison to end the torment of eternal jail. She has found assassins and paid them to show her ways to snap a neck without making a noise, and how to take a man from his home in the middle of the night without waking up the wife beside him. She bears no weapon because weapons make noise and she can kill with her hands. She was taught by murderers, hitmen, and thungs, and thus this most high-born of princesses fights like a scoundrel out of hell. She assaults them from behind, she kicks them between the legs hard enough to turn their manhood into a blast of pain and weakness, she shoves her palm into their nose so the bone shoots straight into the brain and she hurls dust into their eyes. Ashelia does not fight. She kills.

She prefers the darkness, the only one of them who likes to fight at night; battling in the shadows of the buildings of Rabanastre taught her to grow used to the black and she knows how to maneuver in it. She knows how to fight, when neither you nor your opponent can make a sound for fear of alerting others to the battle and the only thing before your eyes is the endless dark. She is used to silent combat at night and thus disdains Vaan and Basch both for their battle cries. To her, battle should be quiet- and at night. She hates broad, open fighting in daylight..

(She has become their silent nightmare. When the need for silence prevails, Ashelia is their warrior. Legends will tell, in future times, that Ashelia's party had a guardian demon who killed for them when it was dark and they had to be quiet. The stories, like most legends, are almost true.)

Ironically, this style has forced her to keep a partner. Ashelia cannot fight the party's battles alone; used to backstabbing, to surprise attacks, ambushes and traps, she is incapable of fighting openly and doing it well. She is deadly, but not in direct affairs- the only kind they usually find themselves in.

Therefore, she and Balthier have taken to working together. Vaan is too busy commanding and informing to work as her partner; Fran is too crazed. Penelo's fighting style is too direct and Basch's style is too defensive. She needs someone to weave in and out of the enemy, and distract them with his actions.

Balthier is all this and more. He's a beautifully distractive fighter; all flourishes and words, he's dramatic and daring and exceptionally annoying to his opposition. Best of all, he moves in combat, ducking and weaving around and through his opponents. Penelo and Basch simply stand where they are and pound enemies from where they stand- Balthier seems to be everywhere at once. People like Balthier cause confusion and that confusion is exactly what Ashelia thrives on. Picking off stragglers and those still wondering just where that crazy man went is the exact sort of thing Ashelia- and the snakes whose cunning she unknowingly mimics- excels at.

Balthier himself does it for the simplest reason. He likes it. He was trained by the Empire, but in swords; he picked up fisticuffs for fun and taught himself from what the Imperials showed him. Balthier likes fighting and sees no problem with enjoying himself while doing it. His style- dodges and punches- serves but one purpose.

It looks great.

And for a man whose reputation is built on image, that's not such a bad thing to have.

Besides, it's not like he kills most of the people he sees. That's Ashe's job. And while he's not particularly fond of the quiet but violent princess, he must admit- it's hard not to like someone when they keep snapping the necks of those sneaking up on you from behind.

Thus is the party formed- united by a desire to fight the Empire and their choice in weaponry- and, amazingly, they have found some sort of coherence. They know how to fight with each other. Oh, sometimes, it gets shaken up a bit, or thrown into confusion- battle is inherently like that sometimes. Penelo has stood beside Balthier and Vaan has ended up being trapped in a corner with only Fran for help. But they always find a way to make it work- from Vaan finding out that simply throwing people at Fran was a bit like chucking them at a blender and exactly as effective at killing them, to Penelo finding that Balthier's flashiness disguised her power just as well as Basch's size, they have found a way to keep themselves alive. Fists and feet have not failed them yet and never will.

It was always their choice.

- R&R! You are the best fans in the world, and I'm sorry Christmas was such a slump! Love and peace, gentlemen and ladies!

He appears when his foe is distracted and hits them from behind, he kicks them between the legs hard enough to bust their manhood into blood and pain and never stands his ground. It's odd, but Basch sees no problem with it.

(In fact- though the others don't know it, and only Ashe even suspects- backstabs, appears when the foe is distracted and busts them apart, hits them between the legs hard enough to bust their manhood and uses elbows already tough from years spent as a knight, he has advanced to the point that he's practically immune to pain, and tolerant of the worst abuses. Basch fights like a shield, taking rather than giving. He gives them room to fight.

(Sometimes they wonder if this is his penance, for the things he has allowed to happen to his country.)

He's particularly skilled when fighting alongside Penelo, who has taken to teaming with the big knight during their battles; foes focus on the tall, stalwart warrior and ignore the slender girl, and die for it. Vaan checks on them as he checks on everyone, but rarely has to stop to help; they are quite capable fighters together. What Penelo can't smash, Basch can usually strangle.

(When he does fight, it's murderous; thumbs through eyes into brains and hands choking throats, snapped necks and crushed skulls.) legends, his body the weapon of his choice. Basch is a big man, and that's an enormous advantage in combat; reach, strength, and endurance the gifts of a big form, and despite all the things the smaller folk of the world have said, the hardest fights are always with big people. Basch tackles foes, grabs them and tosses them like ragdolls; or otherwise grasps their heads and slams them into rocks,


	25. A Knight's Code

I forgot to mention this, but one of my reviewers typed the word Subuurban as a future Final Fantasy name.

I LOVE YOU.

Part three of the four-part update! I'm now playing two old classics on my PS3, the first non-PS3 games I've played on my PS3.

(What are they? Why, the greatest of their generation- Wild ARMS 3 for the PS2, and then Metal Gear Solid for the Playstation. Vive la the Best!)

Wow, is it time to finish AIOS and start back to the normal chaptering! It's an Esper chapter this time, starring Adrammalech, who... well, you must admit the bastard looks _impressive_.

(Sure, he's a crap summon who does thunder damage, but _look_ at him! He's _awesome_ looking!)

So, here we go, a story of thunder and demons and knights and cool looks. It's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter Nineteen

A Knight's Code

I remember.

I remember what it meant to be a knight, to be the gods' chosen one; I marched out onto dreary battlefields and black castles and I came back victorious. I outmatched and outslugged every opponent I ever faced (literally; I have always preferred my fists). I marched to the tune of a holy beat and I heard the horn calls that good men have heard on battlefields when their allies have finally arrived to face the foe. I was might, I was justice, I was courage, I was unstoppable.

By might.

But there are other ways to take down a titan- other methods, to snare a scion; when brute force fails words will sometimes win and that is what Mateus did to me. I realize now that it was a plan almost childish in its simplicity, its obviousness- but that's not what I saw at the time, tired and resting from my wars on the incline of a few stone steps. I was currently destroying an organization of demons in the Demesne of Shadow, which was where I spent practically all my time in those days; Mateus' influence corrupts.

The first one came to me then, a little demon so weak that I could have continued sleeping and been perfectly safe; it simply sat there and stared at me, and when I flapped my wings in irritation to be rid of the damn thing, it just hopped back a bit and continued to stare at me. The stare wasn't hateful, though, it was more... awed, like a priest looking upon the form of a god.

It's so amusing to be captured by vanity, isn't it? So amusing. And so stupid. The oldest story in all the world and I fell right for it.

Mateus kept sending them- little demons, never ones big enough to make me feel threatened or cause me to instantly assault them- and always when I was at my most tired, or distracted, staring at me as I slept and bowing to me when I arose. I never knew he was sending them; they told me they had heard of my fame and followed, and I believed. They even started hanging around when I was awake, always at a respectful distance, always admiring... and finally, I got used to them.

I remember it even now. In battle, I could hear their cheers when I was winning, something that unnerved me at first but then strengthened me. These were the shouts of my followers. Should I not be pleased?

I should have recognized it for what it was but I...

But there is no but, there is no excuse. I have done as I should not have done, and that is all there is.

Eventually, powerful demons would bow to me rather than fight me, and somehow, I made it to the throne of Shadow, empty for centuries since Shemhazai had vacated the spot, and Mateus bowed before me as I took the throne.

Looking back, I wonder if I should have bowed to him. It would have been more true to what was really happening.

At any rate, the rest of the story blurs by me in a moment- none of it's really important, anyway, I failed before the war and nothing after that really matters anymore.

I watch Basch, my summoner, and think on how we are so very much the contrast of each other's lives. We are both knights, you see, I of the gods and he of the humans, but past that all things run wrong for me and right for him.

For you see, I failed the people I called my own- failed the gods- became a lord of demons and lost my code. A knight has a code he lives by, it is what makes a knight different from any other fighter handy with a sword. We live by what we believe in, we die for what we believe in, and we never give up.

By all those criteria, by all those things, Basch has succeeded as a knight beyond his wildest dreams. And I, I have failed.

...I want to go back.

It's stupid. There is no redemption; knights know this where other people don't. Perhaps it's a measure of our code, of how we force ourselves to live by it and brook no faltering. Perhaps it's just the way all life should live: no tolerances for failure.

So I will never again be the god's champion. How could I be? I failed them.

But that does not mean I have failed man.

...There is an idea in Basch, a thought of reviving his homeland, a want to see Landis again as something more than a subjugated nation, and I see no reason to believe that thunder and lightning cannot help.

I will not pray- praying is for beings who have done better than I.

But even as I think this, a hope- and hope is the beginning of prayer- swirls around me, and I am curious as to how a broken knight might reclaim his code.

-

_And in the land of Landis_

_You see_

_They say that a monster bars the way_

_That the gate that leads to the land which_

_Once ruled over them_

_Hail Archadia!_

_And which gave them up because_

_A knight begged an Emperor_

_That gate, the one which leads to_

_Archadia Mighty_

_Is a gate guarded by _

_something dark and fierce._

_But in the land of Landis_

_You see_

_They say that_

_At that gate_

_When the storms have come_

_And the thunder howls_

_And the rain pours_

_You can sometimes look up at_

_The top of that gate_

_And see there_

_Standing_

_A demon_

_And he is praying._

_And that is why_

_In the land of Landis_

_You see_

_There is no fear_

_of evil_

_When the storms have come_

-Poem, author unknown

-R&R please!


	26. A Gun Man

Final part! This is a dedication to the lovely aethere, who both wrote a piece in inspiration to this and wanted a Vaan/Guns chapter. I've decided that this last bit will be in the order in which you get the party members, so it'll be Vaan/Balthier/Fran/Basch/Ashe/Penelo, with appropriate breaks for Espers inbetween.

(We're getting into the final stretch, people! Go for the gold!)

Wishing everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year- Late!

(Because the cake is a lie and I got distracted!)

It's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 20

A Gun Man

Vaan can remember the first time he picked up a gun.

Stole one, at any rate.

(He doesn't quibble over minor details.)

It was a huge cannon, quite unsuited for his small form. He was... fifteen? Fourteen? It had been a little after the war, so probably fifteen. Fifteen and scrawny because he'd never been nourished quite right and rat was the best meal he often had to eat (or any scraps from Migelo's table, but Migelo had his own troubles in those years and even back then Vaan knew better than to press for aid where none was to be found). He'd stolen it because an Imperial had it and that was reason enough for him.

(The Imperial citizen, a tourist who took the gun with him in order to hunt wolves, still thinks he left the gun at his hotel, all these years later.)

He'd taken it and thought it would be cool to play with it and then he discovered problems. For one thing, loading it.

(Turns out that, no, you can't just poke the bullet all the way into the barrel. You do, in fact, need a stick. A thin friend's arm is not a replacement for a stick.)

For another thing, acquiring ammo.

(Albeit, for a young pickpocket with nothing better to do, it probably wasn't as difficult as it could have been.)

And, of course, recoil.

(It's amazing how far a child can fly backward without their feet leaving the ground. Vaan still has scuff marks on his soles.)

He gave it up, as a child, and hadn't thought about it since, tucking it away in the sewers so no one would find it.

So why was he thinking about it now? When his party was ready to move out, to take down the Empire, to save the world, when this was happening, why was his mind spinning thoughts about bullets and powder? It was not a weapon for him. He was fast; it was slow. He was action, and hands, and movement; it was quiet, and gears, and solidity.

He was not made for this weapon. A smart man would take another one.

But Vaan is different from other men in this one recourse.

He's never seen a challenge he did not believe he could overcome, and the gun is a weapon better than what he has no.

So he takes off in the night to the sewers, pulls a gun out of a hiding place that through sheer luck left it dry and working, and returns with a weapon on his shoulders.

-

It's completely unworkable at first. He reloads slow, and his aim is shoddy (though the sound of bullets tearing into opponents is quite satisfying, a nice _thunk_). Fran, the only other gunner, just looks at him while he curses and vainly tries to force turned bullets into barrels while his companions tear through their foes.

But Vaan never gave up on anything, and this isn't the start.

-

It's some time later when he figures out the answer.

He needs to work with the gun. He needs to take it apart, see how it worked, and see if he could figure out what to do with it.

The problem is the gun. Therefore, the answer must also be the gun. Vaan couldn't change himself, but something that was made to begin with could be changed. Right?

So one night he stole Basch's clothes from where they hung on the drying line- doing laundry was important before heading into cities, kept others from thinking they were vagabonds or brigands- and used them to prepare a space on the ground for his gun. Then, slowly and with much careful deliberation and cursing, he took it apart with a knife.

What he found was... a mass of freaking parts. He had no idea what these things did.

He sighed and set to work.

-

He studied the gun for what seemed like weeks on end- the others noticed it but never commented. Anything Vaan did to make himself a better gunner would help every one of them.

He examined it by sunlight and torchlight, viewed it by the flickering flames of a dying campfire and the stable glow of magefire. He studied it till his eyes grew bleary and weak, and then his hands would rub the soreness out and he would go right back to work. Penelo sometimes- in the few moments they ever had alone together, awkward because they remembered what it was like to be wrapped up in each other and the hot sweet smell of sweat in one of Lowtown's many abandoned structures, first time for them both- that he would kill his eyes hunting the way in which he would be a better gunner. He'd laugh but think inside that she really wasn't that far from truth.

He didn't understand it. He didn't know how the gun worked.

But he would not stop until he did.

(He had only determination and courage inside of him. Courage wouldn't help, but determination would.)

-

He finally understood when he realized that he could identify the parts on sight. He finally got how the gun worked.

That day, they reached Nabradia, and that was when he left them, for a short time, to hunt out a certain shop in the city, there to meet his destiny.

-

The next fight saw Vaan shoot six shots before the others could blink and drop all five enemies like cargo from a sinking airship.

(He missed the first shot.)

The party turned to stare in amazement- nobody expected Vaan to be much help anymore and no one expected any gunner to shoot so quickly. Vaan grinned at them and laughed. Quickly popping a little cylinder out of the side of the gun- _clink!_- he stuffed six bullets, all of which looked handmade, into the chambers before snapping it back in.

" Look what I made!" he proclaimed loudly, grinning from ear to ear and laughing as he spun his gun in the air.

His revolving chamber idea had worked!

-

He'd created it out of iron, want, and dreams- the thing had been worked in a gun shop Vaan had found that specialized in refitting barrels. Vaan had used the machines that reshaped the barrels to reshape some metal chunks he stole into the parts he was creating.

And he had so many more ideas, all so very good, all so very intriguing, that he couldn't wait to try them.

It was after that when Vaan started buying guns at each town they came to, stealing metal to work with, finding the local gun shop, and setting to work.

-

The things Vaan invented looked a bit odd, but always worked. The ideas come from many places. Seeing Penelo examine handbombs made him come up with a handbomb launcher, a shoulder mounted propellant device that hurled them yards into enemy targets and blew them to pieces.

(Fran uses it. The thing's enormous and far too heavy for Vaan to wield. Watching the Viera march into battle with a titanic bomb launcher strapped to her shoulder never fails to tickle Basch- who, secretly, loves the incongruity of the picture.)

Watching Ashelia blast multiple creatures with a single fireball gave him the idea for what he eventually named his Fourshot, four barrels set parallel to each other that fired from a single trigger. It was a pain in the ass to reload and heavy as hell but it put down targets at close range quick as a snake.

He never learned the real name of the things he was toying with, removing, adding onto. He never acquired any actual learning involving the guns he kept forging, for himself and his companions.

But he understood how they worked, through sheer determination to succeed at anything, even that which he was not meant to.

Vaan has a contrary soul.

It was always his choice.

-Thus ends the four-parter! Hope you like!


	27. Dark Edge

Hey people! I've been gone for what feels like forever- had a lot to do. (Also been working on an actual book I'm hoping someone will publish... and becoming a liberal. Yes, that's right, I'm a liberal now. I've seen the light. Viva la Obama!) But! We are not quite done yet. I leave a lot of stuff unfinished- get bored or disgusted with its poor quality (both my Harry Potter stories apply here...)- but this one thing I'm hoping to get done.

So! The final Vaan chapter. It's Vaan and ninja swords, actually, something I've been half-planning for a long time- let's admit it, of all the "typical" character archetypes, Vaan is closest to that of the ninja, not the thief. Hs strength, health, and overall damage output are too high.

(Seriously. Go look at his stats. Go. Vaan is almost top-dog in every damn category where he _isn't_ top-dog. Vaan is the best party member overall, bar none. Though, oddly, Penelo has the highest physical defense of anyone...)

Also, I thought of doing a Basch/ninja swords one-shot, and the image was too funny and I had to quit. Anyway, it's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 21

Dark Edge

Weapons are funny things, sometimes.

Vaan knows this because he is a weapon himself. They of Ashe's personal army are all weapons- Ashe's weapons, for her to wield in order to restore her kingdom. The hunk of metal in their hands is just there to make them a _better_ weapon, that's all.

And Vaan is an odd weapon and one that he knows Ashe has trouble wielding. He has no experience- just killing a few rats here and there, maybe a guard once in a great while when he can chance it and the individual in question deserved it. None of those things help him now, since the rats were, well, rats, and the guards he killed through assassination techniques- crowd stabbings, poisonings, slit throats. The people he's fighting now are much more dangerous than mere animals and don't give him the luxury of stealth.

He has speed. Speed he has plenty of- quicker on his feet than anyone in their group but the Viera, and her speed relies on the presence of Mist to make it work, pouring raw magic into her muscles to make herself half a god of physical might. Vaan doesn't need anything but the strength of his legs and some room, and you can watch him fly.

And the better speed, the more important one, the speed of hands- ah, in that at least, he's in a class by himself, because being a thief for years means he's had practice aplenty. Vaan can strike so quickly that he's caught the giant serpents in mid-strike, a flicker of surprise across their dying eyes as Vaan's weapon buries itself in their forehead. He's spent many a night playing a game of slap-wrist with the princess, because she thinks she's too slow when it comes to striking targets and needs the practice, and Vaan is the best one to practice with.

(She isn't as slow as she thinks, but the princess has an inferiority complex a mile wide and a mean streak three times that, so Vaan plays along. She's only ever hit his hands twice- once because Penelo bent over behind Ashe and Vaan got distracted.)

He has no toughness. Vaan getting much more than kissed by an enemy assault is left breathless, staggered; he was once almost felled by an angry Urstrix that got lucky and winged him, and he'd wandered about, stunned and brainless, for a few seconds. He'd almost died before Ashe put her sword clean through the thing's brain. He can't wear heavy armor without nearly passing out from the weight of it and he doesn't even really care that much for light armor, to tell the truth. Vaan prefers to dodge attacks because he can't choose to take them.

He's got strength, more than one would think given his inability to handle blows. It's part inborn ability, it's part having a hard life, and it's part raw willpower. Basch admires Vaan for his potential and has put him through several strength-gaining exercises when they set up camp, using armor pieces as impromptu weights. Vaan performs well in them- though he's always bemused by how much better Fran, of all people, is at the exercises.

(She's joined Basch and Vaan for the nightly exercise, and she and the betrayed knight often compete to see who can do best. It's gotten to the point that Balthier and Penelo place bets and keep track of it- the current record stands sixteen, twelve, and three ties, Basch ahead.)

And finally- though this is something even Vaan doesn't really think about, because it scares him a little inside- Mist reacts to Vaan like wood to fire, reacts to him with burning and fury and nobody else in their group has this connection to Mist except Fran. Something happens to Vaan when the Mist is thick, maybe just an echo of the man he could have been; something central, powerful, a leading figure in some long-lost play. None of them really know or remember what happens when the Mist is thickest and they go someplace _else_

(Penelo might, but she keeps quiet about it)

But Vaan thinks that he has held the birth of new stars in his hand, and the thought terrifies him beyond all imagination.

All of this combines to make up him. He doesn't really make sense. That's the problem. He's not like Basch. Basch fits; he's predictable. Basch is really, really strong, and he's very, very tough, and he's truly, truly slow. Basch makes sense as a weapon. Ashe can wield him easily; if a situation demands strength or vigor, she places him there. If it demands speed, she doesn't.

Penelo, too, makes sense. She is their gifted little healer-mage; she has incredible curative powers and can fix any wound, her magical equipment makes her vulnerable to physical assault but armors her well against mystical attack, and she cannot effectively assault her enemies unless the Mist is so thick that you can see it fogging up on your breath. Ashe can wield her as easily as she wields Basch; she places her away from the battle when they are facing foes with physical equipment, and Penelo keeps everyone alive without facing the danger she cannot handle. Against enemy wizards, Penelo heads to the thickest fighting, and acts as living shield against magery.

But Vaan? He doesn't make sense. Situations demanding strength often demand toughness, and he doesn't have that. He has no magic

(Except whatever it is that possesses him, in the darkness, in the Mist, and that magic terrifies him so)

and magical assaults damage him just as badly. He's fast, and in situations demanding speed he's proved an excellent choice, but it feels like a waste for him to be a runner and a thief when he's strong enough to do real damage too.

So that is why Vaan is here, in this weapon shop, at night, with the owner asleep. Vaan saw something he wanted earlier that day.

The owner will notice in the morning, but they'll be gone by then. Also, Vaan must admit- someone with such poor anti-theft devices almost deserves to be robbed.

(Shop-owners in the flying city have such terrible protections that Vaan robbed one three times in the same hour out of sheer contempt. Vaan does not take kindly to his art- if you can call it that- being insulted in such a way.)

So Vaan breaks the locks, sidesteps the magical spell that would stun him until daybreak and the guard's arrival, and pries loose from its resting place a weapon:

A sword that was called the Orochi.

--

It's an odd blade, this weapon. Most weapons are forged of steel with various enchantments added to enhance them. This one is forged from an elemental substance, darkness itself, and needs no minor enchantments to enhance its mighty form.

Vaan is okay with the blade being made of night's cloth. He's seen things on this journey that he's afraid of more than the dark.

(**My name is glory, **Ultima said, and then there was nothing but a shockwave of light, the roar of the sun, and a momentary glimpse of something- something- standing in the middle of the light and smiling on its beautiful, monstrous face. )

Yes, there are things Vaan fears much more than darkness. If anything, the touch of the shadow against his leg is comforting. Darkness is an old friend of thieves like himself; he's done more at night than in day, and the sense he gets from the blade- of cold and calm and quiet- is almost reassuring.

This is the kind of blade he can use- built to take advantage of both his greatest attributes. The weapon is designed for quick swings and can make good use of his speed, but unlike a dagger, it's firm enough and tough enough to allow him to hack and stab harder than he could with a more fragile weapon, allowing his strength to shine. This weapon allows him to exemplify all his traits, and it will give Ashe a better handle on how Vaan is to be used.

Vaan should never have been on this journey. It isn't his place. But if he is to be on it, then he will survive, just as he always has, in Rabanastre and elsewhere. And this blade, by helping Ashe, will help them all survive, perhaps as long as anyone can against such odds as they face.

It was always his choice.

-R&R!


	28. Filth

Hey people! It's Silverlocke980 here, with a new Esper chapter! This time around, it's Cuchulainn, the Impure. Wow, the fat flabby bastard's a bit wrong, ain't he? You look at the other Espers, and most of them look... well... not exactly normal, but not monstrous either.

You take one look at Cuchulainn and your first thought is, " I'm gonna have to kill him." It's not the fact he's got no eyes, it's not the fact that he's got a damn spear stuck through his skull, it's not even the fact that he's the green color of decaying mold and foul things.

It's the fact he's grinning the whole time.

It's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 22

Filth

Ah! Welcome, welcome. Enter my domain. Come in, sit down, I haven't had a visitor in ages.

Ignore the sludge. It's quite comfortable once you get used to it.

So, your name is Fran, aye? My summoner! I haven't had a summoner since I don't remember when. Let's look at you for a minute, shall we?

A Viera! My, my, no wonder you can come here, you bunny-eared girls always were closer to the Mist than anyone else. And my word! You've been so busy, you hot little thing, you. Taking on empires and traveling with princesses and even falling in love with a sky pirate. Such a busy, busy life.

...What's that? You want to know where the hell you are?

Oh, naughty, naughty. Good little girls don't say curse words, Fran, how could you act out so? Naughty, naughty.

As for your question, though... this sewer, this pile of muck with no doors, just great glass mirrors...

It's my home.

I'm not quite like the other Espers, you see, darling one. For I...

I am a god. A deity of filth, foulness, the most disgusting evils vomited forth by the endless gullet that is mortal kind, spewed forth onto this wretched land like discharge from an open wound. I am rape, my dear. I am murder, I am every child abused by her father, or his father, some men aren't picky about that. I am... _incredible_ things, my dear, so much rot and hate and disaster it would choke you to look on it.

Speaking of which, it's nearly choking you now, isn't it? Just looking on me, on all I am, is causing your mind to break. Your very heart and soul, rejecting the viciousness of this place, rejecting the very look of me, the sight of me and all I am..,

Don't try to run away, beautiful one, because I'm in your mind now, and soon I'll be in your soul, too...

_An inn in Nalbina. Midnight._

Fran snapped awake. Viera have three hearts, and therefore they do not often experience what other races refer to as their "heart racing"- but Fran could feel all three of them, pumping like her very life depended on it. The sort of pumping only fear could provide.

Just what _was _that place? What just happened to her?

She sat up in bed and looked around. It was her room in the inn, one she shared with Balthier. She was back in the physical world, at least, away from the Mist-place that the Esper had dragged her to. What was that? Espers shouldn't have that kind of power, to exert actual physical influence over their summoner.

Fran had known something was different- something _wrong_- about the flabby Esper-beast they'd found hiding in the sewers of Rabanastre, taking up a hunch on a prayer that the rumor they'd heard was true. Ashe was desperately trying to gather each Esper up so that they would have some kind of firepower to hurl at Vayne when they finally reached him. Already they'd spent a month following up rumors, ideas, half-heard hauntings in an attempt to find the Death Seraph, Zalera, and when they'd found him summoning the dead in a lonely tunnel, Ashe had ordered Fran to enter into contract with him. Ashe had finally noticed that the Viera had strictly refrained from becoming a summoner up to that point. Truth was, Fran didn't want the connection; unlike a Hume, she didn't have the innate barriers, the purely physical nature, that afforded her companions protection from the very forces they employed. The Viera connection to the Mist was blessing and curse. Had it happened earlier in the journey, Fran would have refused and left and Balthier went with her.

Still, by this point, they were Ashelia's servants and they damn well knew it. Fran and Balthier had to keep helping the princess, had to restore Dalmasca- if they didn't, they'd never have a safe port again. They'd revealed too much of themselves to the Empire in the course of this journey, were too well known to it now, and they would never be able to safely port at the Empire ever again. Putting in at Bhujerba for the rest of their lives had little appeal, but an entire kingdom in their debt... now that would be a big enough place to lose their pursuers in. The fact it bordered the Empire, their favorite hunting grounds for fat cargo ships with few defenses, was just an added bonus.

So Fran accepted and became a summoner. Zalera was very, very unusual- she'd talked to the spirit-being through the link they shared, and found out his story- but all in all, the death creature was quiet, calm, and very controllable. Most days, Fran didn't even notice that she'd become a summoner.

So when this creature had finally been put down, after attempting to rot out their bodies- Penelo had fallen screaming _my foot, something's happened to my foot_ and when Fran had glanced over while reloading her gun, she'd seen that the blonde desert child had no foot, it'd rotted clean away- Fran had volunteered. She'd thought, with something so strange, so wrong, that she'd be able to handle it, her Viera nature giving her better control over the Esper. Zalera hadn't been so difficult, so why should this... Cuchulainn?... be any different?

The first faint feeling of fear tugged in her heart, and Fran wondered just what she'd see when she fell back asleep.

_Back in Cuchulainn's Cathredral._

Well, hello again, gorgeous! Good to have you back. I was starting to miss you. When you've had so little company for such a long time, why, even the most minor of guests is a treat to treasure, and you are certainly far above that!

Ah, you're curious as to why you went straight back here when you fell asleep again. Well, honey, I'm sure you've figured this out by now, but I'm not the kind of creature who's only going to mess with you when it adds dramatic tension to the plot. Nope, beautiful, I'm going to be in your head every single second you're asleep, sitting here, talking to you, having a grand old time, eating up your soul, bit by bit.

Would you like something to drink while you're here? I was created by the gods to eat the filth of the world, and I've simply become ever more fond of it since then. Rape is one of my personal favorites, but since you're new to the dish, you'd probably rather start with something a bit less refined. Rape is a subtle flavor, darling, the sort of thing that has so many variations and influences it's hard to tell where it begins or ends.

Oh, and it's not just rape, of course. Really, I describe a whole category of things as rape, because that's the most obvious example of it. Men keep women down, you know this as well as I do, and they punish them for stepping out of line, and that, my darling, is part of what I call rape.

Oh, how many delicious flavors they are! You Viera suffer the worst for it, dear. Your entire race is this aesthetic ideal, of the perfect woman- oh, what long lovely legs, what beautiful shapely faces, what firm, pleasing curves. Male Humes have so many fantasies about raping your kind, about just taking you, that I could sit here and drink a river made of it. Let's not even get started on what those same Humes think about those of their own race, that's enough to drive a soul mad.

It did drive me mad, at that, actually, it's why I'm the way I am now. I have no eyes, my dear, because I tore them out- when I saw all that mortals had done, continue to do, I could not bear to look at it and threw them away. This was before my ascendance, of course. Now I see through the mirrors of my cathredral, my dear, see all the million and one evils of humanity right before my blind face.

This weapon in my head, this great spear, is Zodiark's attempt to bind me- not entirely successful, for am I not talking to you now? I am fat in form for I eat of filth, and the tide of it is such that it makes gloriously obese. And I smile, my dear, because I have seen the real face of mortals, and before it, everything seems funny- all light, all good, pales before this gleaming madness.

Trying to escape again? I'll tell you what- since I am a kind god, I will give you one night's reprieve. Tell your loved ones you care for them. Tell them all how beautiful they are, how wonderful. Tell them, too, of my benevolence, my glorious gratitude. I once had many worshippers, and I would hear the prayers of my faithful again.

I will await your return, beautiful one.

_The next night_.

It is hard, to plan something so mad, so insane, and then act it out; but Fran went to bed that night determined and able, having told no one of what was going on in her head or of the war she planned to wage that night.

She'd been right, in the sewers, to absorb this beast. For if Fran was right, there was only one thing to do about it, and she was the only one in their group who could.

She fell asleep some time after midnight, and the war began.

_Cuchulainn's Cathredral._

Ah! So! You are back again, aren't you? I must say, I'm impressed. Admittedly, I did give you a reprieve, but usually just looking upon me is enough to drive a mortal soul mad. Even talking with you as I did was not enough to pierce the fragile shell of morality and thought that protects your pink, fleshy brain. That is truly impressive, my dear; I have shattered better souls with less than this.

...Are you _attacking _me? Oh, my dear, that really won't do, when did you learn to fight like that? Don't you remember what I said? Women who act assertive, who try to be part of the world, who try to _live_- they are pushed down, punished. What are you doing acting on your own?

...It looks like I'll have to do this the hard way. You came here bearing weapons of Mist against me- don't you know this is my home, my Cathredral? I am a god, my dear, and nowhere more so than here. Your waves of ice, your flip kicks bearing energy, your furious blows... they are as nothing to me.

Dream of slip-shod symphonies of nothing and the feeling of hard, hot hands pawing at your breasts and you can't escape, you can't run, they are everywhere and they want you and...

...

What?

What is this, Viera? What is this? My abilities- they don't affect you? But... but I...

...No matter. I sense the bonding spell you are starting to forge and I will go along with it. I don't know why my abilities failed to work on you, Fran, and I don't really care.

Because I am in your mind now, and nothing you do after that matters or makes a difference. I have corrupted every single simpleton who has ever made a pact with me. I have turned them mad and set them on the course of destruction and made them ruin their lives, their families' lives, their own hopes and dreams. I have set men on each other with such ferocity as to empower generations of hatred.

And this binding spell- it is not so great as it seems.

-

_Fran went into the battle with but one thought in her head, and it kept her safe- a desire to defeat Cuchulainn, to seal the Esper behind even thicker doors, to bar the way to his entrance into the physical world. Fran had found her task, the thing she eventually took as the purpose of her life- to be the guardian which Cuchulainn could never defeat. For this reason, Cuchulainn could not harm her- he relied on his targets, especially his female targets, to meekly accept the things he sent their way, and Fran's refusal to bow down to him proved Cuchulainn's undoing. She would dedicate her life after the journey to the task of keeping the Impure god imprisoned._

_Fran's spell would falter, from time to time, in later years, and always she received a pounding headache as Cuchulainn sent a storm of rot her way in those moments- a tornado of images, symbols, all adding up to murder and worse things. Throughout all his life, Balthier never forgot the time he managed to see such an attack occur. _

_They were journeying into a tunnel, some deep dark somewhere, to rescue a friend, when Fran suddenly stopped and spasmed, slamming up against a wall. Balthier, who she'd told the turth too, had immediately grabbed her and shook her; as she recovered, blinking slowly, he'd asked her why she was doing this._

_She looked at him with weary eyes, and said, " Because someone has to." And though it was wearying, Fran never forgot the righteous feeling, the perfection, she felt upon taking the creeature on. There are some things that must be fought, that have to be fought, for the souls that look upon such things cannot let them stand without becoming unclean themselves._

_It was always her choice._

-R&R please!


End file.
